Interview with Oliver W. Hill, Sr.

<P>CARRINGTON: Okay, Mr. Hill, why don't you tell us about what you said, when you wanted to start between -- about Civil Rights between 1930 and 1960.
HILL: Whenever you are ready.
CARRINGTON: Whenever you are ready, go ahead and start.
HILL: I would like to start this program with a discussion of the significance of the movement that started in 1930. What had happened was, Negro -- I mean Dr. Mordecai Johnson, President of Howard University, had looked into the situation and found that sometimes cases went up to the Supreme Court that did not have a sufficient record for the court to act on properly, so he determined to make Howard University Law School, which from its inception in early -- in the mid 19th Century, essentially, up to that time had been an evening school, he intended to make it a first-class law school, and he engaged the services of one of the most brilliant legal scholars and fine gentleman as you could locate, Charles Hamilton Houston.
Charlie was a son of a lawyer, and he was present in Washington. He was also one of the adjunct professors. Charlie decided what ought to be done is to have a full-time day school, cut out the adjuncts. Of course, that created a quite stir around Washington because most of the adjuncts and the other teachers, too, were either lawyers or people working in -- judges and things working in the government service.
It also happened at that time a young man named -- Charles Garland's father died, left him with a large estate. He was one of these bright young men, said, oh, hell, I didn't earn it, I'm going to give it to the NAACP to fight segregation. And he turned the money over to the NAACP -- he directed that money be turned over -- that the estate be directed to -- funds of the estate be directed to the NAACP.
And the determination was made, and at Charlie's suggestion as to how the funds are to be best used, and it was determined that the best use of it would be to fight segregation. The suggestion was made that we file suits all over the south and simultaneously challenge segregation per se.
Charlie said, no, it would look like a stunt, and furthermore, we didn't have the manpower, and secondly -- I mean thirdly, we'd be banging our heads up against a stone wall in the early thirties to try to challenge segregation head-on, and the results, subsequent results proved him to be dead right.
All right. Charlie developed a very fine young faculty, including his cousin, William Hastie, who later became the first federal -- Negro federal circuit court judge, one of the first -- one of the early federal judges, district court judges. And he also had doctor -- well, at that time he wasn't a doctor -- man named Andy Ranson, he graduated Ohio State Law School. Hastie and Charlie had both finished Harvard Law School. Andy Ranson had finished as a member of the Order of Court, that's like Phi Beta Kappa. Later, he became -- got his doctorate in juris prudence at Harvard.
And I don't have anything to refresh my memory right now, and I can't [inaudible] a Jewish lawyer name Cohen. Then there was a very fine old gentlemen from out, one of them far west, like Iowa or Minnesota somewhere, they made the bulk of the -- the backbone of the new faculty. But they also had, of course -- including -- they had a man named George -- E. C. Hayes, was one of the best trial lawyers in the City of Washington, and Charlie's father was not quite the caliber of the others, but he was a fine man, constituted part of the faculty.
All right. Now, we started out, the first class had Thurgood Marshal. I went to law school to challenge segregation. I didn't know all this was happening. I mean, I had to learn that when I first became conscious of it, of course I knew it all the time, but became conscious of the fact that Congress back in the days -- Civil War days had given Negroes all the Civil Rights of any white person, and it was the United States Supreme Court in the case known as Plessy v. Ferguson that had taken all those rights away from us and put us in a class, sometimes second, third and even as low as fourth class citizens, because any white person that got off the other side and came across the street had a legal status in the United States, he didn't have to have a penny in his pocket, but he had the status superior to that than the richest Negro in town.
All right. One of the first things Charlie instructed us on was that we was going to make the law school or -- there was another young man -- he wasn't a young man, he was a little older than the rest us of named Sweat. His brother had been -- was a doctor in Detroit, and he had moved into what was known as a changing neighborhood, and white folks gave him seven days to get out, or else they were going to put him out, and so it was on the Friday that they said they were going to put him out the mob appeared, but he had gotten some of his friends to stay in the house with him, so somebody in the mob shot at the house, and somebody in the house shot back at the mob, but the mob hit the house, but the bullet from inside the house hit one of the mob and killed him, and they charged Dr. Sweat with the murder.
I will give you the rest of the story later on, but I just wanted to let you know how things went in those days. Sweat was in there, too. He was wanted to break up segregation. He was there with his brother.
Charlie, one of the first things Charlie informed us about was we were going to make Howard University Law School an approved law school, and he worked us six days a week, not only getting the law, but doing extra things like going down to the F.B.I. and learning how they did things, going out to St. Elizabeth's Insane Asylum and getting -- knowing -- getting something about that. Going down to the United States District Attorney's Office and seeing how they functioned, learn how things happened, because one of the things I was -- it was easy to understand now, later, but Negroes had had no contact, no association with so much of this stuff that you needed to have, to know something besides just the plane law.
All right. In the first case -- I mean, we worked -- school started at 8:00 o'clock in the morning, we usually get out at 11:30. Thurgood and I would go down to [inaudible]. They had all kinds of profits in those days. We bought half a dozen of the -- Daddy Graves [inaudible] and profit this and profit that. We'd go down to [inaudible] and Vine. They had a restaurant downtown there, and you go in and say "Peace, 'tis truly wonderful," and you get a big meal for a quarter, and extra big meal for 35 cents. And Thurgood had a big appetite. He got the 35 cent one most of the time. I was content with the 25.
But anyway, we would have our lunch, and then we would go back to school and we would study until around 5:00 o'clock. At that time, Thurgood would go to catch the train to go up to Baltimore. He was commuting from Baltimore. I would go leave to go to the job -- my job I had. I was waiting tables in the evening at one of the big apartment houses downtown.
All right, as a consequence, we worked steadily like that, and too, of course, Charlie seeing us there every day, we became his proteges. And at the first break -- attempted break through was during my -- our second year, a young man in Durham, North Carolina wanted to go to the School of Pharmacy, and Dr. Shepherd was President of the North Carolina Central School down there in Durham, North Carolina. And he wouldn't give -- he wouldn't give us the man's transcript, and by the time it went through court and got it, all of them -- made somebody persuade the man to change his mind, so nothing resulted from that effort to challenge School of Pharmacy in North Carolina.
But in the mean time, we studied and graduated in 1933. And Thurgood and some of the other students -- Thurgood took the Maryland Bar, and some of the other students took the District of Columbia Bar. I was planning the whole time, that whole time to go back to Roanoke, Virginia. That's where I spent my elementary school days. And so -- I hadn't applied soon enough to get the D.C. -- I mean Virginia Bar until December, so when I found out that Thurgood had passed and the boys that had taken the D.C. Bar had passed, I was under a little pressure.
But anyway, in the mean time -- I mean, let me back up a little bit. I was -- I had finished high school in mid term, and so I didn't see any need of waiting until September to go to college. I lived three or four blocks from the college. I enrolled in the spring quarter. So -- and after I learned that segregation -- I mean that Plessy had -- court taken our rights in Plessy, and at that time, you couldn't get a law through Congress to make it a crime to lynch a Negro. That was a big project of NAACP, to get up there, couldn't get a law passed to lynch a Negro, much less enhance any of his Civil Rights, so I determined the only thing we could do was somebody take another case to the Supreme Court and convince them that the 1896 decision was wrong. And being somebody, I went to the dean's office to see what I could do, had to do to become a lawyer, and I found that I could take one more case -- one more course in foreign language, and I could go to law school at the end of my senior year, and get my degree, first degree at the end of my first year in law school, that is, upon successful transmission of it.
But anyway, at that time, I decided to take a course in Latin. They said Latin might be helpful for me in law school. And in the first year -- in the Latin class, a freshman named S. W. Tucker was in the class, and I met him. So what that brings me on, when he finished college, I was finishing law school. And the next summer I was working downtown at O'Donnell's Seafood Restaurant, and I ran into him one day. I said, what are you doing? He said, studying for the bar. I said, so am I. And I had Woodbridge's notes, and I would go over to Alexandria, let him use my copy of Woodbridge's notes, and Dudley Woodbridge was a professor down at William [and] Mary that ran a bar exam course, and he was studying my notes, and I was studying -- they had a 1924 Code of Virginia, I used that, and every Thursday I would go over there, and as a consequence, in December, we both took the bar and we both passed.
There's a lot of incidents that we may or may not want to go over later, but that's -- giving the highlights as to how long I had known S. W. Tucker.
CARRINGTON: Let me ask you this. With the Plessy case --
HILL: Hmm?
CARRINGTON: With the Plessy case --
HILL: Plessy versus Ferguson.
CARRINGTON: Yes. What were some of the things you did to reverse that decision, some of the activities?
HILL: Well, I'll get to that. So I went to Roanoke in 1934, and took the bar in December, '33, and went down to Roanoke and got married -- I got married during the summer, September, and went to Roanoke and started practicing in 1934. That was in the height of the depression. More people were out on the streets than doing anything else.
In the meantime, Thurgood had taken, along with Charlie, had taken -- Charlie Houston, had taken a case in Detroit -- I mean in Baltimore, on behalf of a young man to attend the Baltimore -- I mean Maryland Law School. I had his name in mind until I got here -- until then -- we'll get it later. In the district -- united -- I mean the district court held in favor of the plaintiff, so he -- and Maryland did not appeal, so he became -- he was able to go to Maryland Law School, so we had no precedent, but we had no -- I mean, we had successful -- we had a case, but no real precedent, so --
But also, at that time there was great agitation in Virginia. We had organized -- what it was, Virginia Negroes had organized what was known as the Virginia Conference, we were the Southside Chapter, and it was a very fine operation, and very powerful in the fraternity, so we decided that -- at least it was decided, I didn't decide it, it was some of the Norfolk members that this would be an excellent thing for the NAACP to do. So we organized in Virginia in 1935 what was known as the Virginia State Conference of NAACP branches. It was the first one in the country, and we got -- to develop more strength, and wide-spread effort to deal with Negro people.
And see, what Charlie -- when he said that you better not hit your head up against a stone wall challenging the segregation per se, he decided at that time what we should do is challenge segregation at its weakest link. The doctrine was supposed to be separate but equal, but everything was separate, but nothing was equal, and everything -- so we challenged one thing after another, the failure to permit Negroes to serve on juries, petit and grand. And see, the teacher's association were up in the air because they wanted to get better salaries, and at that time in Virginia, they only gave teachers a one-year contract, and you had no tenure and, for example, I have forgotten what the one was in Norfolk, but for example, in Richmond, in 1940, the teacher -- Negro teachers went from $350.00 a year on up to $999.00, that was the highest paid, any Negro. White people started at $1,000.00 and went up to 17, $18,000, so they were here trying to do something about that, equalizing salaries. That was a big deal with them. And NAACP informed -- went through the state telling people to support us on the teachers' salary case, and then we'll tackle the school facilities themselves.
And they had -- put it this way, I started practicing in Roanoke in 1934, I practiced there until 1936. On the case -- well, I was a little dumb, instead of challenging one -- the jury I was the proponent, attorney for -- on two different cases, the judge appointed me to represent an indigent client because there was no salary attached to it, I decided I would wait to challenge the jury thing when I got a paying client. It was a little stupid. If I had gone on and challenged the jury system, I would have generated some interest and might have got me some business. I don't know.
But anyway, on one occasion, in 1934, I think, or '35, I got a call one night saying that -- the man said he called New York because he thought there was going to be a lynching in Wytheville, a Negro had shot a deputy sheriff down there. And they had told him to call me in Roanoke, so he called me about 10:00 o'clock at night and told me the story. So I told him, all right, I'd be down there the next day, because I had to borrow a car. And anyway, I got a car the next day, and drove on down to Wytheville. On my way down there, they said, now, they said what are you going to do if it looks like it is going to be a lynching in process? Well, I resolved that I wasn't going to be no fool, I was going to keep on going until I got down to Bristol and try to get some help.
But anyway, when I got to Wytheville things seemed calm enough, and I went on into town, and found the man that had called me, and went to see the defendant. They had already had a preliminary hearing and trial date was set. And to show you how things worked in those days, on the day the trial was set for I came back to Wytheville, and I walked into the courtroom, and it was empty. I saw one man up there at the desk, so I concluded he may be the Commonwealth's Attorney, so I walked up to him and told him -- hold out my card, had it in my hand, told him I was Oliver W. Hill from Roanoke, Virginia, came down to represent the defendant in the case that day.
And he looked me straight in the eye and said, "I don't know you."
And I said, "You are just as right as you can be," and I stuck my card back in my pocket and went over and sat down.
When the court opened, I walked up to -- before the judge, said, "May it please the Court, I want to move my admission to be a member of the Bar of this Court." And in Virginia, in those days, you had to be admitted to the bar of every court you practiced in. And now they have more modern facilities, they bring them all to Richmond and swear them all in, all the successful candidates from the bar exam, swear them all in at one time, but in those days, they didn't. You had to go to -- the judge looked over, told the clerk, "Swear him in, Mr. Clerk," but that was my procedure from that point on every time I was outside of my local jurisdiction if I didn't have anybody to represent me.
All right, to make a long story short, that case -- funny part, Charlie Houston and a young man by the name of J. Byron Hopkins, cousin of Claude Hopkins, [inaudible] had a wonderful bank back in those days, came through at the end of the first day of the trial and found me in the library, and I tried to get him to stay over and help me on the second day, but he said in the first place, he had a pre-arranged scheduled and didn't do it. But anyway, I had tried to get the jury -- the judge -- I mean the Commonwealth's Attorney to let the judge hear the case rather than the jury. I didn't have any faith in the jury. But he knew what the score would be, so he refused. Anyway, the jury convicted my man, but he got either three or four years, but he hadn't killed the deputy. He had shot him.
But the funny part was that I had a good defense, and the judge said while the jury was out, he said, "Young man, I think you did a nice job and if I had heard this case without a jury, I would have acquitted your client."
Of course, I made a motion for him to set the jury verdict aside, but none of them would ever do that. They would always claim they couldn't exchange their judgment for that of a jury. I mean, it was always a matter of they were factual -- it was a factual case, and if the jury wanted to believe the Commonwealth's side, then it was up -- the judge couldn't just overrule it. It wasn't exactly no -- well, I'll tell you about a case. We had a case later, after -- well, wait a minute -- that's the trouble with my age, I have a hard time keeping things in some sort of reasonable chronological order.
But anyway, by 1936 I was wasn't doing much other than people would give me a note with three or four thousand dollars, and I would draw their salary, and keep -- what was known as a wage assignment, and I would draw the salary, and parcel the money out among the creditors, I kept people from suing and garnishing their salary. But things like -- a few things like that and odds and ends, but I wasn't making any real money. And so in the spring -- middle of 1936, I decided to go on back to Washington where I could at least find some kind of job and try to develop a little more financial stability.
Anyway, so I went back to Washington, stayed -- I got back there, and the CIO was organizing, and a friend of mine, William Whitehead, he had a little restaurant down on Georgia Avenue, and we had -- we made that a headquarters, and then down to get Negroes organized, we had Negro waiters and cooks, and we tried to get the CIO to take them in their organization, but they wanted to get -- they were negotiating with the AFL group, waiters and bartenders and -- cooks and bartenders, and weren't successful at doing that, but they did offer us positions on railroads, and we got them a good man for that. I didn't want to -- anyway, that contact -- we were attending the meetings, the organizational meetings and things, I got a lot of experience and contacts with the railway.
But anyway, in 1939 Hop and -- we called him Hop -- we called him Hop -- J. Byron Hopkins, and another lawyer, young lawyer in Richmond named Tom Ewing came up from Washington because they had a legal problem, they wanted to talk to Andy Ranson, and Andy informed me and said these people -- these lawyers were coming up from Richmond, why don't I come up and join them, so I did and we learned about their problem. Then Hop asked me what I plan to do. I said, "Well, I'm trying to get myself a little stake and then I'm going back to Roanoke."
They said, "Why don't you come back to Richmond?" We formed the firm of Hopkins, Ewing & Hill. That sounded great to me. I always wanted to be in a firm rather than a solo practice, so I came to Richmond in 1939, renewed my contacts with the teachers' association, but they had brought -- filed a suit in the state court, and they sued -- Aline Black, which was a teacher had been in the Norfolk school system for 11 years, and the state held up the hearing on the case until May of 1939, and then the judge ruled that she had waived her constitutional rights, and the school board did not renew her salary, so she was -- they said the case was moot.
We found another client for a plaintiff, and -- me, I wasn't involved in that suit, but Thurgood, Thurgood and I got a plaintiff, and we filed a suit in the district court, under what was known as Bouchard's (phonetic) Spurious Class Action Theory, and we had filed that in August. All right, they delayed holding the hearing until February, Lincoln's birthday in February. And old judge, old Judge Wade (phonetic) listened -- gave -- Thurgood had started the argument since he'd already had his case in Maryland, he started the argument, and I was supposed to finish it up. But old Judge Wade gave Thurgood such a hard time, Bill Hastie said maybe -- maybe I better let him take over. I was happy to do so. But he gave Bill as hard a time as he had Thurgood, and then as soon as he finished arguing, he pulled out -- already decided -- the decision, and he held up that the -- held the same as the court had -- state court had held, that the plaintiff had waived his right when he signed the contract. So we -- we had to appeal it.
The one thing I remember, that day we were a disgusted group, we were driving back, and over the television -- I mean over the radio in the car the verdict came -- I mean news came out in the case known as Hale versus Kentucky, the United States Supreme Court had reversed, and the name of the case, Andy Ranson -- the team of lawyers was Thurgood Marshall, Bill Hastie -- Thurgood -- I mean Andy Ranson and me. Andy had tried that case, argued that case in the Supreme Court and gotten his reversal.
But anyway, now when we get back look for a case to try to determine -- file our appeal, we found out that it was the only way for us to get the record printed, briefs filed and get the case before the United States Circuit for the -- United States Fourth Circuit for its April term, and we -- we went forth and prepared our appeal, but we decided we would hold -- if somebody hadn't come up with one by the last week of the term that we'd meet at the law school and see if we could come up with a last-minute suggestion.
All right, we had a large group of lawyers there, I mean we have four of us, and plus several other members of the faculty. And we kicked everything around, and even thought of asking for an injunction, but the only trouble was we didn't believe that -- federal court would do it, enjoin the state for carrying out a state law. They would probably insist that we go before the state court, at least that was our reasoning.
But anyway, nobody could think of anything. So finally, late that evening I said, "Well, looks like the only thing we could do is for me to go back and catch the court and appear before them and ask to hold a special term, special hearing on our case in time for us to file -- court to hear it before the client's contract ran out."
And so I will never forget, Bill Hastie said, "Well, are you going to do it? Who is going to do it, you?"
I said, "yeah."
He said, "Well, that settles it."
So I call -- I was -- at that time my wife was still in Washington. I called her and told her I wouldn't be back to the apartment, I was going on to Richmond. And on my way back, I said I wonder why in the hell I didn't think to just prepare the papers right there at the law school where I had all these other members of the faculty there nearby. And actually, it was one of these situations where if you would have ranked all the lawyers there, I would have been the bottom, but I had come up with the idea.
So anyway, when I got back to the -- pretty soon I prepared the papers and put them in the mail. Back in those days, you know, we didn't have e-mails and all this sort of thing. I put, send special delivery.
And so I called the Norfolk attorney at his office and I told him I had filed these papers, and it was going to come up for a hearing on Thursday, and they were sent special delivery, and you know, they would get them later that evening or the next morning, but I told him what was the basis of my action.
Anyway, on the Thursday he was so sure I was going to get washed away, he didn't even bother to come up to the table when the case was called. But anyway, but it so happened, the funny part of what happened was just before my case a case was called involving one of the biggest lawyers in the town, a former Assistant Attorney General, and a member of the legislature, and see, in Richmond, it is still that way, although they are building a new court now, but you can look out of the window of the old post office, on the third floor is where the court held session, and look up at the legislature in the capital. And the court in those days consisted of Parker, Chief Justice Parker, Sober from Maryland, and Dobey from Virginia. I can't -- I had this man's name in my mind -- I already had his name in my mind before I got in here, but I can't pull it up right now, but anyway, as I said, it is one of the big-shot lawyers in the state. So he made -- he argued his case -- his motion. His motion was he wanted the court to restore his case that had been dismissed because he hadn't come down to the clerk's office and extended his time in time.
So Parker -- and Parker was a big man, bigger than I am, taller too, and Parker said, you are right up there in the legislature and you couldn't just come down here to the clerk's office in time to meet the rules? "Motion denied," he bellowed it out, but about that time that really made my knees quiver come to think that a big-shot lawyer could get dismissed like that.
But anyway they called my case, and I came -- went up to the thing, and I started off, "May it please the Court," and my movement is to hold a special term of court to hear this case. And Parker looked at me and said, "Wait a minute, you mean you want the court to -- the United States Government to go to the expense of bringing this court back here just for the purpose of hearing your case?"
"Yes, sir."
And he said, "What's so important about your case?"
Well, then I went on and told him what had happened in the Aline Black case, and what had happened, we filed our case in August and they -- tried to get an early hearing, they had delayed, delayed, and now, we couldn't get the record case set before the June term, a regular June court for this hearing -- I mean, for this term of court and the next term would be June term, and by that time if they failed to re-employ our client, the case would be moot, just like Aline Black case had been in the state court.
And old Soper spoke up and said, "What you want is an injunction, isn't it?"
I said, "Yes, sir."
And when he said that, the city attorney jumped up out of his seat and came running up to the thing, "Oh, we don't need no injunction. We don't need no injunction."
And then the next thing, they challenge him. "Is what this young lawyer said right?" Incidentally, this is my first time I ever appeared before an appellate court. "Is what this young lawyer said, is that correct?"
And he had to admit it was right because it was true. And anyway, it ended up, they didn't hold the special term, but they told me and they told him if anything happened to my client in the mean time, let them know, they'll find a way to do something about it, and as a consequence nobody in the Norfolk school system lost his contract until after our case had been heard in June and decided in August.
Now, I think I rambled off a little further than I had intended when I started, but anyway, you can do something about that, I guess.
CARRINGTON: Yeah. Let me ask you a question.
HILL: Go ahead, ask your question.
CARRINGTON: Let's talk a little bit about the Jim Crow laws and some of the --
HILL: Well, Jim Crow was just a -- Jim Crow was a man -- was a white man who blacked his face -- have you ever heard of black face?
CARRINGTON: Yes.
HILL: Black face, reddened his lips, enlarged his lips and all that, and had a boyful laugh. His name was actually Jim Crow. And he would put on his pantomime, pantomime of his concept of a Negro. And so -- and of course he went over big with white folks because it was a caricature of a real Negro, and so when they put the segregation laws effect -- actually, that's from everybody else, the Negro called them the Jim Crow laws. And that's all -- that's all -- I mean, nothing -- there was no special -- nothing special about Jim Crow except it was a term that Negroes used, and I guess white folks, too, but anyway, Negroes used to describe the segregation laws, that's all.
CARRINGTON: Tell me about some of the important litigation you did against Jim Crow.
HILL: Well see, our objective was to prepare a case to go to the Supreme Court and to reverse Plessy versus Ferguson, but Plessy versus Ferguson was a case that had arisen in 1895 down in New Orleans, and it was a transportation case. As a matter of fact, it was a test case. New Orleans had set up what were called the Jim Crow cars for Negroes. It was the first car behind the engine. And Negroes weren't allowed to sit in the coaches with the white folks, unless they were attending to some child of the Negro. In other words, if a maid came along looking after some white child, she could sit in the white car, in the coach with the white child because the white child had to sit in there.
But anyway, this guy Plessy was so white that when the police came into the station to serve the warrant -- I mean came into court to serve the warrant, they had to point him out to the police because he was as white as any white person. He was one of the Negroes by choice.
And they never was some certain -- it was reasonably well, but this wasn't a case that we would have -- the record wasn't built up like we would have built it up, and like we did build it up in later years, had we prepared the case. I mean, it went more on argument than it did on fact, factual information.
Anyway, but the -- let's say isolated Negroes had the gall to say that if Negroes deem it to be inferior, it was in their mind rather than anything that they had, quoted, done, recently quoted, which was a bunch of bull.
And so prior to the Plessy case, it had been a case, but it was the Civil Rights -- the radical congress -- they called them a radical congress because they had conservative Republicans and they had the so-called radical Republicans. In 1875, they had passed the Civil Rights Bill specifying Negroes to be entitled to all the accommodations, like hotels and restaurants, and that case came -- I mean, a case was developed and came up for a hearing in 18 -- about 1883 or 4, and they ruled that the Civil Rights Act didn't apply to individuals, it only applied to the state, and -- and then there was -- but that case preceded the -- and then they ignored the English common law -- see, the United States developed what is known as the common law. See they brought over the judge-made law in England in the United States courts, trial by jury and the various decisions.
And one of the regulations under English law was that a traveler was entitled to food and lodging, all he had to do was be able to pay for it. They ignored that fact altogether. And they also ignored the fact that the 14th Amendment says all persons born to naturalized United States Citizens of the United States and the state in which they reside, and they ignored the citizenship completely. So I have forgotten now where I was.
CARRINGTON: You were talking about how --
HILL: That was the situation. And so, as I say, we challenged -- everything was separated, so we had to challenge the jury system, we -- in most communities they didn't have -- they had busses to haul white children to the consolidated school, but the Negro had to walk. And for example, one of the first -- one of the early cases I had in that field was down in the Waverly -- not in Waverly -- it was down in Greensville County, the NAACP -- NAACP -- a man in Sussex County was telling me that he had to make a decision the next day, and he decided that he was going to send his girl to the school and keep the boy to work on the farm. And I said, well, hell, the boy needs an education just like the girl.
He said, I know, but I can't send both of them. And he can be a greater help to me, and she might be able to get a job teaching, doing something. And going to the school -- he lived in Sussex County about 35 miles from Waverly, and the school that they had set up for Negro training school, they didn't call them high schools, was located in Waverly, and they said -- somebody had picked up a bus and would haul the children over there for a dollar a day, but -- and he couldn't afford that, so he had two children, he hadn't decided whether he was going to let her stay -- some people boarded the whole week over in Waverly and they come back home on weekends, and so transported in this private bus.
So I told him, well, get a group of people together whose children would normally go to Waverly, and I'll come back the next Monday and we'll challenge that. And I came back and made -- I rode it out of the daggone bus driver that the only reason he wouldn't haul all of them was because they were Negroes. I had a truck -- he had brought his kids in a truck, so I carried the kids to a town about 10 miles away, down to Stony Creek where -- that was the first nearest high school, and walked in with all these bunch of kids, had a new principal, and I storm on in and enroll these students in the school. And he was all flustered, he didn't know what to do, so finally he called over to Waverly and talked to the superintendent of schools, and I could heard him holler back, "hell, no."
But anyway, I knew he wasn't going to do it. I had already prepared my papers. And I had already filed a suit in Sussex County, a teacher's county case, and they had fired the teacher. And -- but she went -- had gone to Washington and got a better job than she had down there paying her more since they weren't paying.
So anyway, went on back -- I carried the kids back, and I came on home back to Richmond and I had already -- already had the names to the case, to the suit, and I went on down and filed it that Thursday. And so when we got into court on Thursday, the bailiff met me at out there on Main Street at door, said, the judge wants to see you in chambers.
I go in, get up there, and there's the school board, and their lawyer, and judge all sitting back in his anteroom. And he said, what is this, what's all this you got here? And so I told him, well, I filed a suit for bus transportation. They won't provide no bus transportation for the students. They live about 35 miles away, most of them. Some of them even -- some of them even 42, 43 miles.
And he said, this case don't belong in my court.
And I said, yes, it does, Judge.
So he got the book -- and of course, he knew. He was trying to bluff me, I think. And anyway, Greensville County was in it, within the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court of Richmond. So he said, be sure you give them enough notice.
I said, well, listen, Judge, I haven't given them any notice at all. I just brought the case here and asked for a temporary restraining order, and he gave them notice just to accommodate them. And so he really was mad then. He looked at them and said, you all know what the law is. Go on out there and settle this thing. This was old Judge Garland, Garland Pollard.
Anyway, so we decided we'd meet -- that was Thursday -- we decided we'd meet Saturday in the lawyer's office over in Petersburg. And in the mean, time I called Martin, Martin knew -- had finished -- Martin and I had operated -- at that time on cases -- every time we had a case outside the jurisdiction out of our jurisdiction, we would go together, and so I called Martin and told him, meet me in Petersburg that Saturday.
And we got over there Saturday. I had written the school board and told them that -- one of the first things -- when they told me about it -- I mean during that week I had written -- told them I had an idea, and give me a call and we will see if we can work it out, and they didn't give me a call, and so I went on with my case. So they said, well, what is your idea?
I said, well, I don't know. I have forgotten it now. And besides, you all are so smart, you fired my teacher, you fired her in the teacher salary case. And the Chairman of the School Board jumped up and said to the school superintendent, I told you not to fire that girl. I told you all it was going to do was create some trouble. I told you not to fire her.
That made the superintendent mad, and he snapped something at me, and I snapped something back to him, and he tried like he was going to come across the table, I tried to meet him. They grabbed him on his side, and Martin grabbed me on my side. But anyway, we ended up with the meeting ending nothing.
What I was going to tell them, you see, back in those days, you couldn't just get motor vehicles, buses and things. Everything was commanded by the Army. And -- but I was going to tell them all they had to do was call Harry Byrd and tell him they needed -- to get them some buses. He just called me -- referred to me as that nigger lawyer. Said that nigger lawyer is going to have white folks and Negroes riding in the same bus.
And of course, I wasn't going to tell them that that way, but I was going to tell them that Harry Byrd could use his influence and get them some buses. But anyway, as I say, I was hot headed back in those days.
CARRINGTON: Let me ask you something about Greensville.
HILL: All right.
CARRINGTON: In Greensville back at that time they wouldn't let black people vote in a Democratic primary.
HILL: That's right. Well, now, I'll tell you about that. Then when I went to Washington -- I went back to Virginia in 1939, a Negro named West in 1929 had filed a suit. He had a Negro lawyer named Pollard and a white lawyer name Cohen. They had filed a suit challenging -- a suit known as West versus Bliley, and it was ancestors to the Bliley who up until very recently had been congressman from the 3rd District, and he even was a congressman in the 7th District until -- I think this is his first year he didn't run.
CARRINGTON: Uh-huh.
HILL: Anyway, the circuit court in 1930 ruled that Negroes were entitled to vote in the Democratic primary, and that was in 1930.
All right, Tom Ewing was one of the guys that I told you, I mentioned before, I told you before was responsible for me coming to Richmond, along with Byron Hopkins, had been down to Greensville County on that Friday evening, and they had a group down there called the Hundred Men's Club, and they had engaged him to bring a suit to make it possible for them to vote in the Democratic primary which was, in those days, was held in August. And so he came back to Richmond, and it was about -- it must have been close to midnight. Back in those days I was staying in my office. So he came in, and we talked it over and prepared the papers. And got up early the next morning, rode on down to -- Saturday morning, went on down to Emporia, that's where court held, circuit court held, county seat, Greensville County.
And the Judge was hearing a case. The Commonwealth's attorney was named Innis, and George Allen, Sr., who was the former -- or the first member of the so-called law firm Allen, Allen, Allen & Allen, plaintiff's law firm, or back in those days it was just Allen & Allen. Allen -- George Allen, Sr., and George Allen, Jr., and the other two boys, Wilbur and Ashby were in law school.
Anyway, George was -- I mean Mr. Allen had a case up there, his client had gone on (audible) gone over on the railroad track, Norfolk & Western Railroad Track and gotten killed. But anyway that case ended, the judge asked us, well, what could he do for us.
And I told him we wanted him to hear a mandamus against the electoral board. And he told me, he says -- he looked over our petition and filed it -- after it was filed, and the other lawyer said, Judge, it is two of them and the judge said Innis is here by himself, so I'm going to appoint you as lawyer to help Innis, and we will adjourn court now and come back at 2:00 o'clock and decide this thing. So in later years I used to tease Mr. Allen, I remember you were trying to keep Negroes from voting in the Democratic primary, which wasn't -- you know, really wasn't true. He was appointed.
But anyway, we came back and argued the case out. And now the court had ruled in 1930 that Negroes could vote in the Democratic primary, and could serve for it, but they still weren't never allowed, weren't permitted to vote. So the judge ruled that he wasn't going to assume that the electoral board wouldn't carry out its duty, but if they didn't then he would -- he'd be in Emporia on Thursday -- on Tuesday, and he would enter an order that day. Well, that word got around, and on Tuesday they were permitting Negroes to vote in the primary without the court order. And Calvin and I were riding around in the county to see -- varying precincts to see if anybody was having any trouble anywhere in the county. And we came around one corner, and down near the North Carolina line, and it was a very narrow, little road, and we turned the corner and it dipped down to the turn, downhill, and we look around there, and there at the bottom of the hill all are this great big crowd of white folks with ropes, sticks and things. I don't know which one of us said it, but one said, this looks like this it. And the other said, sure do.
But we couldn't -- didn't have room enough to turn around, so we kept on down through there and went on through them and went across the river -- it was one of these rivers in rural Virginia in those days they had the cover over it, and one-way traffic, and we went through, and we got about in the middle of it, I looked over -- there was a big opening, and I looked, and there was an automobile down there. I told Tom, I says, I told Tom, I says, looks like they are fishing -- trying to fish this automobile out of the river. Tom said, do you want to drive, because I'm too weak, because we really thought, like I said, we were riding into a lynching. But anyway, that's one of those things you run into, but that was the -- you asked me about the Green -- that was Greensville, that's where we got Negroes to vote in Greensville County.
But that was -- it was a great contact because around the first of the year I had a case with a young funeral director. He had joined in with an older funeral director, and he had saved up $500.00 and put -- he put it in the bank, and they served -- two or three days later, the other guy drew the money out and left town, and he was left stuck with a business that had nothing but debts. And old man Allen filed a suit for unlawful detainer to take over the building because the rent was in arrears.
And I went down to his office, told him what had happened. And he said, well, I'll tell you what I'll do, let's just have him pay the current rent and let him pay it whenever he can on arrears until he gets it paid. Well, that's as fine a thing as you could possibly want. And he told his secretary that this young man, fine young man, any time he wants to use our library or anything, anything we have got, allow him to use it, because he's a fine young man. And so we were friends from that point on. I said, things worked out beautifully having made a contact with him
And he started -- he was one of the founders of what is known as the -- now known as Trial Lawyers Association, but they started off with what was known as NAPA, National Association of Plaintiffs' Attorneys, and he -- I was too busy fighting segregation to take it up, but I had -- we had organized -- see, we couldn't join these local bar associations, they were segregated, and so we organized the Old Dominion Bar Association, and I had Mr. Allen to come in and lecture on what he was trying to do, build up his theory of trying ways -- new means of trying negligence cases, and I had him at several of our meetings
CARRINGTON: Let me ask you this --
HILL: Hmm?
CARRINGTON: During all your fights for equal rights in Virginia, they had a response call Massive Resistance.
HILL: Yes. Well now, see, the first case that was filed to challenge the unequal -- constitutionality of the segregation of schools was down in South Carolina, down in Darlington County. And Judge Brandon Weiss was the judge, and he had been an old South Carolina -- he was an old South Carolina gentleman, but he'd gotten -- he was disapproved of so far as his Carolina friends were concerned for two reasons: One, because he treated Negroes fairly; and secondly, he lost his first wife and married a girl from up north, and she -- they didn't take kindly to that at all.
I spoke in a school nearby one time, you know, Judge Weiss had invited me over to his house for dinner, and he told -- he and his wife told me all the ordeals they went through. They finally left South Carolina.
I can't recall anybody's name right now. I'm sorry I'm running blank with all these names, but he -- we had finished the first suit, [inaudible]. We were involved in it because Spots was Southeastern Counsel for NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and I was involved in the varying cases, but they were going to have the hearing in north -- in South Carolina. I had a man in Richmond.
Martin had been -- Martin was in everything up until -- he had dropped out when we started to challenge -- decided to challenge the segregation per se, but he didn't want to challenge Negro schools.
CARRINGTON: Now, with the Massive Resistance, what was the impact of that on integration?
HILL: Hmm.
CARRINGTON: Impact on --
HILL: Well, so now, the schools were -- suits were filed and tried down in North Carolina, and in the mean time -- in the mean time, we had filed several suits in the so-called separate but equal doctrine against varying school boards. One of them -- I can remember one of them was King George County, and I had the old superintendent on the stand, and I asked him a question, I said, "Why do you call secondary schools for white children high school but so-called secondary schools for Negroes you call them training schools?"
And he said, "Well, we call them training schools because we teach them things that they can get a job doing." And that was -- things like electricity, and whole lot of science and all those kind of things, and radio, that was -- it was during that -- in those days hadn't become public, but I mean, it was being studied, all those kind of things, anything that was beyond manual labor or menial job -- omitted from the training school, so-called training schools. About the only thing they did give because they had manual training, carpentry, and taught girls domestic science, but so far as real science and things of that nature were omitted.
You know, when you finished the seventh grade, you had to -- up until the time the class ahead of me [inaudible] you had to go down to Petersburg to attend Normal Industrial School, or to St. Paul's or to the Academy Union. There was no high school. They called it Harrison High in seventh and eighth grade, but about the only thing in the eighth grade that we had, there was no science at all. The only thing we had, probably algebra, and I'm trying to remember whether they had geometry or not. I can't remember right now.
But -- so what did I say -- opportunities for Negroes to become trained in anything above the level of manual labor was restricted or eliminated.
And you asked me about massive so, all right, old judge -- you know, you always have preliminary hearings before judges, what they call pretrial hearings to pick dates and discuss issues and things, raise for -- witnesses, list of witnesses. And old Justin -- and Prince Edward County had gotten the Hunton & Williams firm to represent them. Mr. Moore, T. Justin Moore, whose father was the chief lawyer, one of their principal trial lawyers, Manny Archibald Robertson, and they had been down to South Carolina and seen the trial in South Carolina, and they said -- they were telling the Judge Hudson [inaudible] see, they had the dolls, you know, and psychological tests, asked the Negro children to pick out choice between white and black dolls, and you asked them about who they prefer to be, most of them would say the white doll, or the one they thought was the better doll, most of them would say the white doll, who -- they had been subjected -- that was one of the other vicious things about segregation that it is not only isolated, but they tried to make Negroes believe that they were inferior. And so we tried the case, and we finally got a decision overruling Plessy versus Ferguson, instead of them coming in saying well, let's ban it, set up a meeting a week from the decision.
Incidentally, the week before the decision I had been down in Williamsburg as a member of a group of academic -- along with a bunch of academics and prominent citizens under the auspices of the Southern Regional Conference -- Southern Regional Council Conference, that's what it was, we had gotten a grant from the [inaudible] of the Republic, $250,000, they had about 10 or 15 of us down here working on projects to ease into desegregation. And I came back -- that's the only reason I was up -- that's one of the reasons I wasn't up in Washington next -- on Monday when the decision came out.
But anyway -- oh, so he was standing there, he prearranged for a meeting. Now, in Boston that day, the national convention of the NAACP, everybody knew this decision was going to come as soon as they had decided and whenever we got a favorable decision at that Saturday we would hold a conference in Atlanta to make a statement, the NAACP's reaction to it.
So Dr. Tinsley, Jesse Tinsley and the Executive Secretary for the state conference, the NAACP, and I were delegates assigned down there. I can't think of that boy's name either at this moment but I'll get it out somewhere before we get too far. And we went down to Atlanta. On Sunday we held a conference, and we decided -- worked on our statement, and back in those days you had to confirm 24 hours or you might not have a seat on a return trip, on a round-trip ticket on any reservation that you had, so we had confirmed, but we were able to get out -- finished the conference about 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon, we [inaudible] there was a plane going to Richmond at 4:00. We rushed out to the airport to try to see if we could get an earlier flight out. And as I say -- standing there, also, issued a call to [inaudible] a group of people, I was one, Tinsley was one, president, and so was the chief -- the Executive Secretary of the NAACP, and the President of the Virginia Teachers' Association, the Negro Section of Parent Teachers Association and I think -- well, I know the President Norfolk State College, and I think Tom Newton -- I mean Tom Henderson who at that time had been one of our expert witnesses, was the Dean of the college at Virginia Union.
But anyway, we got down and they gave us standby things. Well, we went, stood by for the 4:00 o'clock flight and we couldn't get on. But we knew out flight was supposed to leave at -- between 6:00 and 7:00 o'clock, but thinking we were at 6:00 o'clock or 7:00 o'clock, whatever it was, we were the first ones in line, but we still had these daggone standby tickets, they told us -- we were standing there, we had to stand back.
So we told them, oh, no, this was for the 4:00 o'clock plane. We confirmed reservations on this flight. The guy at the gate wouldn't take our word for it. And the Executive Secretary of the NAACP rushed back into the -- into the waiting room, got the manager, came out. Well, by the time he came out, they had let enough people on the plane so they only had two seats. So we told them there were three of us, and we had an appointment with our governor for the next day in the morning.
They offered us to wait over until the next day, put us up in a hotel and we go out the next morning. That won't do. Well, two of you can go and one stay. We said, no, there are three of us, we were here, and we want -- all three or us were entitled to go. So in the mean time, while they were arguing with us, they cut the motor off in the airplane trying to -- whoever was on there who was not confirmed wouldn't admit it, so we held that plane up for an hour and a half, and finally, the guy confessed that he had -- he was from [inaudible], South Carolina, and he hadn't confirmed, so when we got on there, it was a hot night, and people was sweltering, and when they cut the -- when they cut the motor off, that cut the air conditioning off, that was the reason they cut the motor off. And so when we got to Richmond, the weather was so bad in Richmond we couldn't land, we had to go up to Washington, take a -- they put us on a bus and brought us back to Richmond, so we didn't get home until early the next morning.
But anyway, we were back in Richmond in plenty of time to go down to the capitol to meet with Stanley. And Stanley's idea was, now that you have gotten the decision -- in the mean time -- when the decision first came out, he made a sensible statement, he said, well, the sky is not going to fall, we'll work this thing out. But Harry Byrd was out of town -- out of the country at that time. So anyway, he said at the meeting, his idea was that you all have got your decision, and we'll just let things ride for a while, and you don't do anything, and then we'll scout how we can work it out.
So I spoke up, I said, no, if you do that, you been saying all the time, the people don't want to do it, it's the lawyers doing this thing, and that's all they ever want to do. And nobody in the group agreed with him, even -- we had the publisher of the -- one of the people there, the publisher of the Journal Guide, Norfolk Journal Guide was there, he was a very conservative man, but he said, oh, no, they can't do that.
An then they had a newspaper over in Roanoke called the Tribune, which was run by a Republican, he was ultraconservative, and he said, no, they can't do that.
So anyway, we wouldn't agree we weren't going to do anything. We were going to take some action. We wanted some movement in September, and he wanted us to pass over it for a year.
So anyway, what happened is when Byrd got back, even they -- even that kind of conservative action, they came up with what they call Massive Resistance, and the first thing they attempted to do was to get -- they filed a suit to allow the state -- it was somebody against Dade, Dade was the controller, allowed the state to use state funds to pay tuition grants to white children, and they set up a commission known as the Garland Commission -- yeah, Garland -- and Garland was a state Senator from down --
CARRINGTON: Garland Gray?
HILL: Garland Gray, yeah, I think he was state senator from down Sussex County. And so we argued with them about that. And Henry was so upset he shook his fist at them one time when they had a public hearing. I told them -- I did tell them, all they were going to do was pass daggone, crazy laws that we're going to have declared unconstitutional. Only thing they were going to do is waste time, but in the mean time they came up with what is known as Massive Resistance.
And they had invited all the southern states to a big hearing here in Richmond where they put forth this thing, idea, and they started passing -- at that time -- oh, shucks -- let's see, the attorney general had been -- he came in when I started practicing over in Roanoke in '34, he appeared in Hustings Court, and we got along fine. He was a semi -- he was a semi-liberal guy. He was very fair, and he appointed me on two or three occasions pro bono. To show you how bad things were, you didn't get any fee for representing an indigent client unless he was subject to penalty of more than ten years in the penitentiary, and then you got either $10.00 or 15, I forgot, or something like that.
And one time he appointed another Negro lawyer in Roanoke named Jacobs Reed and I to represent a man who was a hobo, had come to town and gotten involved in a gambling game and now [inaudible] he shot another Negro and killed him. And I won't get into that. That's not a --
CARRINGTON: What were some of the legal --
HILL: Hmm?
CARRINGTON: What were some of the litigation you did against the Massive Resistance?
HILL: I can't hear you.
CARRINGTON: What were some of the legal -- some of the litigation -- what was some of the litigation you did against Massive Resistance?
HILL: Well, Massive Resistance, they passed a whole lot of crazy laws, one was [inaudible] and they started holding -- appointed two committees, state legislative committees. Thompson Committee in the Senate and the Boatwright Committee in the House of Representatives. They would hold hearings, and they were trying their best -- biggest thing they tried to do was find -- get a list of the names of the NAACP members so they could harass them. And Henry -- I mean not Henry -- Tucker and I successfully warded off all of those. We carried them to court.
And they also passed a law called Pupil Placement Law. They set up a three-man commission in Richmond to make the appointment of what school all the children in Virginia would go to in their respective vicinities. And then there was another crazy law they passed, they charged -- set up a law saying -- charged us with running and capping. See, back in those days you couldn't -- things weren't as nice as they are now so far as lawyers is concerned. You couldn't advertise. And you couldn't solicit a client like they do now. All that was called running and capping, so they charge us with running and capping and brought a suit against -- finally brought a suit against S. W. [inaudible].
And -- trying to make -- they had half a dozen or more statutes that they passed trying to avoid desegregating the schools, and we went down there, sat in, they would hold hearings all around the state, the Boatwright Committee and the Thompson Committee. And we refused to -- recommend to my clients to refuse to answer questions that would expose the names of members of the NAACP. That was one of the big things that was happening.
CARRINGTON: Well, with that in mind tell me about the Prince Edward County School Case.
HILL: All right, well, the Prince Edward County School case in 1939, schools opened down -- school, brand new school was opened down in Prince Edward, it was over crowded the day it opened, to show you how much planning they did, an inter-racial school, and starting in early 40s I went down there several times, before I went in the Army, trying to get the school board to do something about the situation.
Their remedy was to put up cardboard shacks and run stove pipes from one to another, and then down into big oil bed -- drums to heat the schools, so that meant those kids would have to leave the main building in bad and inclement weather, and go from one school to the other building to another, or in -- if the weather was real bad, slick out, or snow, or mud, and they kept promising to do something about it.
They always got rid of me. Of course, I used to appear before a lot of boards of supervisors for Negroes because when Negroes appeared, they asked them, what you want, what do you want, John, or Jim? And they would try to tell them, and they would cut them off, tell them they was going into executive session.
Well, at least when I appeared, they at least sat and listened to me, and then do -- whenever they want to do, any time we talk, finish talking, then they always go into executive session so we couldn't hear the discussion.
But anyway, that was -- that situation continued. I went into the Army, and came out. Well, in the mean time, we filed suits in several places. And one of the suits we filed was against a group in Pulaski County, [inaudible] a dentist. We filed -- because he was about 60 or 70 miles from the school over in Christiansburg. It was a consolidated school. They took care of kids in the City of Radford, Pulaski and Montgomery County and somewhere else and all. I have forgotten now. And they hadn't done anything about it. So we were planning a motion for further relief, and one Monday afternoon, the telephone rang and a young lady name Barbara Johns, her uncle was one of -- the famous fiery Baptist preacher named Vernon Johns. Vernon Johns was a firebrand, and he was the one who had been down in Montgomery County for the previous five years before Martin Luther King came there. He was all fired up. He was a firebrand if there ever was one, but he was very eccentric.
But anyway, Barbara Johns called, and I answered the phone and asked if we would finish up -- in my book there's a picture of us sitting at a table -- and asked what we were doing on the afternoon. They called Martin, Spot and I. But I happened to be nearest to the telephone, so I picked up -- answered the telephone, she was telling me, she told me how they had gone out on strike, and the reason and everything that was going on, very orderly, and she wanted us to represent her, Pulaski way. [inaudible] at me.
I said, you don't need no representation. I said, we have already filed suit in Prince Edward -- I mean in Darlington County, South Carolina, challenging segregated schools, and we don't need but one suit to prove a point, so what you ought to do, you all are seniors, you go on back to class, you made your point and go on back to school the next day.
Well, she pleaded so hard that I asked her, well, I'll tell you what, we'll be going up to Christiansburg on Wednesday morning, this is Monday evening, on Wednesday morning, and we'll leave earlier and stop by Reverend [inaudible] church. You'll be there in the Sunday school room, and we'll talk with you, talk it over there.
And that's what we did. On our way up there, we still intended to tell the kids to go on back to school, but we got there, they had such high morale, and so well organized, and could state their case so nicely, we didn't have the heart to turn them down. So we told them if they were no longer filing suit on the theory of separate but equal, but if their parents would back them in a suit challenging constitutionality of the segregation laws per se, we'll take the case. And that we would be going up to Christiansburg and we'd be coming back through there Thursday night. This was early Wednesday morning, and we would be coming back through there Thursday night, and have the parents there and we will go over it there.
We came back Thursday night, the parents was there with the kids, and the parents -- a hundred to one -- 100 percent agreed to back the children. Somebody though raised the question, said, well, this is a county affair, maybe we ought to bring it before the whole county. That's what we wanted to do, so we agreed. And this was Thursday, so we agreed to hold a meeting the following -- not the next day, Friday, but a week from the following day, Friday, and we got there that Friday evening Spot and I, they had the meeting -- of course they had it in the church, in the sanctuary, you know, and the place was full, standing room only. And the News Leader had a reporter down there.
And they argued about it, and it was 90 to one -- I mean 90 percent of the people wanted to pursue the case, so we agreed to it. But one of the principal employer was -- a man was principal of the school over in Cumberland County, but he lived in Greensville County, and -- I mean lived -- not Greens -- in Prince Edward County. And we could understand his problem. He was trying to protect his job. So that was it.
Now, as a consequence of the strike by the pupils -- as a consequence, they fired the principal of the high school, [inaudible] and they fired the county -- what was known as the county agent, agricultural agent, man named -- I think his name was Lancaster, because they figured they were active NAACP people. They figured -- they really had put the kids up to it, but the main proponent of the strike and carrying out and getting the principal out of the school on the date was Barbara Johns. That one mistake we made in filing the suit, we named the plaintiffs alphabetically, but we should have -- it should have been Barbara Johns versus Prince Edward County instead of Davis versus Prince Edward County.
CARRINGTON: You were talking a little while ago about Dr. Sweat and the story about a mop at his house. Can you tell us about that?
HILL: Oh, yeah. That was one -- one of outstanding criminal lawyer in those days was a lawyer named Clarence Darrow. That's one thing about Charlie Houston, he was not only a great lawyer himself and a real gentleman, but he was highly respected throughout the bar. He wasn't a member of the bar association because they were excluding him from that, too, but he was highly respected, and people like Clarence Darrow lectured to my class. He was the lawyer that raised the Scottsboro case, Scottsboro boys had been charged with rape down in Alabama, and the lawyer who handled that later became a judge up in New York, raised the jury question -- lectured to us -- Ball, the founder of the American Bar -- I mean the ACLU lectured at Howard, first Negro to hold a cabinet position in the United States Government from Boston, Taft appointed him Assistant United States Attorney -- I mean Assistant Attorney General; Morris, big lawyer in Chicago who handled -- represented a rail company out there back in those days; and Raymond Pace Alexander who later became a judge and was a big-time lawyer in Philadelphia; and Cummings, the United States Attorney for -- in the District of Columbia.
And as a consequence of all that extra work we did, now -- we made -- visited all these different places, and as a consequence of our work six days a week Howard Law School was approved by the American Association of Better Law Schools and by the American Bar Association before the end of our second year. Students --
CARRINGTON: Would you like some water?
HILL: Hmm?
CARRINGTON: Would you like to stop and get some water?
HILL: That might not be a bad idea.
CARRINGTON: Let's stop the tape for a minute. (Recess)
HILL: Bam, and he was sweating.
CARRINGTON: Okay, let me ask you this, the camera is back on, why don't you name the people who were in your law firm, because you talked about Spotswood Robinson, name the people that you had in your law firm.
HILL: Well, our first firm it was organized -- well, see the Army started pressing me -- what got me in trouble, I applied for a commission in the Navy. See, back in those days, the Navy weren't accepting anybody except people in -- the mess men, waiters, and cooks but they were giving commissions to young white boys who had a whole lot less trial experience than I had, so applied for a commission.
Now, I am 35 years old, and -- but anyway, the only thing it did was stir them up, and they said -- they started talking about drafting me. And let me -- I did that, then in the mean time, at that time, William Hastie was the deputy -- associate -- assistant to the secretary of -- what they call -- wasn't Secretary of Defense but what they call the Secretary of Defense now over at the Pentagon, and we were discussing the thing, and he said, well, Oliver, I'll tell you what to do, they are going to organize a group of airmen down in Tuskegee, and they have a position -- you are too old for flight, but they can make you a Master Sergeant, which is a permanent recruit down there, head of training.
So I said, no, I'm not trying to get out of military service. I'm just trying to break some ice. And so we had -- I had a contact in the Department of State, and to make sure they couldn't do it and bounce me out by saying I'm physically unfit, anyway, they arranged for me to take the examination. Even Air Force recruits, here in Richmond, down -- at the old 6th Street Market, on the second floor.
And of course they passed me because I was in hell of good physical condition, and the guy gave me good marks all the way down until he got to my feet, and he said that I had racially flat feet, and that was a bunch of baloney because I had a high arch, I still got a little arch now as old as I am, but I had a very high arch at that time. But anyway, my number came up, and they put me on alert.
So in December 1942, I told them I couldn't go from day to day not knowing when I would be called. I just agreed that I would come in in June. And the reason for doing that was, I had in mind -- see, Spotswood Robinson, William S. Robinson, William S. Robinson is his full name, finished Howard with the highest marks of any student up to that time, and is still the highest marks of any student at Howard, and he was serving as instructor over at Howard.
And what had happened was, his time came to take the examination, he had planned to take the examination, he actually got -- had became actually ill, and he couldn't take the exam, and then every year after that, this was 1938, now, so then that year, every time after that, he -- what do you call the things -- what do you call it -- systematic -- not systematic, he became ill --
CARRINGTON: At the same time?
HILL: Yeah. So he never did take the bar. So all right, so his father and I had talked about -- his father was an attorney, his father was a real estate lawyer, we had talked about it, and there was some quarters in the old Consolidated Bank Building, which is across the street on the south -- on the east, southeast corner of 1st and Marshall, 1st and Marshall, and back behind the Standard Oil -- Standard Grocery Store -- not -- Standard Drug Store, and where the parking lot is now. Anyway, that's -- I'm going to suggest to Spot that we form a firm, and we'll take that space upstairs which was sitting vacant.
So I talked to Spot about it, and he agreed, and now he got -- he got to take the bar exam, so he signed up for the bar, and in the mean time we agreed that Spot's father would hold everything I had pending, get it postponed, postponed or delayed until Spot had finished -- passed the bar, never any question in anybody's mind he couldn't pass the bar, and that's what we did.
All right, then I went into the Army, Martin had -- see, Martin and I had worked together. He had gotten an appointment as assistant lawyer in the Department of Justice, and they had him out in California prosecuting Germans. And he got disgusted with what was happening, and he resigned, because even before, he had called me and said -- had written me and said if you don't -- you better come on get in the Department of Justice because otherwise they are going to draft you, send you to Camp Claiborne -- send you down to Louisiana -- he didn't say Claiborne, send you down Louisiana and put you in an infantry unit, and that's what happened to him.
But anyway, that summer Martin resigned and came up -- I got a letter. The firm had been from Hill -- still Hill and Robinson, became Hill, Martin and Robinson. And Martin named Martin, lawyer from Danville, his brother was cashier of the bank over there, and William S. Robinson, III, was the son of William Robinson, Jr., who was a lawyer in Richmond. And from a firm at that time was Hill, Martin and Robinson. That's the way it was up until middle of the fifties, after the Brown decision when we dissolved it.
Anyway -- oh, what was I --
CARRINGTON: I think the second firm, Hill, Tucker --
HILL: Hill, Tucker, that came on later, after we dissolved the firm. It became Hill, Buckman -- became Dean of the Howard Law School. We had a little misunderstanding, anyway, but Martin left the office there on 3rd Street, we had to move out of the bank building, over on 3rd Street, 600 Block of 3rd Street, and we moved across the street from the church, Methodist Church there, and we formed a loose arrangement, Martin and I was partners, but a young lady name Rolfin, we were practicing under the firm name of Hill, Martin and Rolfin. And then I left them, and Tucker and I started working together, and we attempted to -- well, we did form -- we formed a firm, but in the mean time, we sure were fighting this Bob Carter who was at that time the chief counsel for the NAACP, and Thurgood and -- Thurgood was chief counsel and Director of the Legal Defense Fund, and of course Spotswood was still the Southeastern Regional representative.
We filed two suits. They filed on behalf of the Legal Defense Fund, and we filed on behalf of the NAACP. We filed the suits simultaneously. And when it came up for trial the court pulled what we called -- what was known as the Pullman Doctrine. They said we had to go over and exhaust our remedies in state court, and hell, I mean, they'd been segregating Negroes all this time, all kinds of decisions, but we still had to go over there first, they made us go over to the state court, get a decision from the state supreme court.
And while that was happening, I got a call asking me to do the party a favor, accept the position in the FHA as Chief of the [inaudible] Relations Commission, and it was what you call a Grade 15 appointment, and that was -- you didn't have to get senate confirmation, and they didn't want the person who -- if I hadn't taken it, the person that they were afraid they would have to hire was appointed -- a man in the classified section that they didn't want. So I agreed to come up there.
By doing that I had to give up -- I didn't know it -- I didn't check it out too carefully, and when I went up to be sworn in, they pulled it on me that I would have to resign from my law firm. At that time, S. W. Tucker and Hill, Hill next to Tucker, but we also -- then I got in touch with Henry, and Henry came down, because I had promised during the fifties at one of the hearings he had made a good presentation before the Gregg Commission, and I had asked him, what was we planning to do.
He said he was planning to go to law school.
I said, well, that was fine. He was chairman of the student body. I told him that's fine. If you decide to come back to Richmond, I'd give him a job. And so he -- at the time, early in the sixties, he was in the Labor Department. So I called on him to come down, join a (inaudible.) Because we had too much work for one man. So that's when Henry Marsh went into it. The firm name became Hill, Tucker and Marsh. That's the [inaudible]. Of course, that was the last firm.
Later we had -- we had other parties but we never changed the name. Of course, the first person we added was Henry's brother, but that didn't change the name. And supposed to be a lot of additions, but part -- but what we did do was, maybe somewhere in talking about this, I'll tell you about the number of judges that came through our office.
But the point I wanted to make is I think -- I don't think I made it up to this time, although I've done a lot of talking, is that we refused -- when I say "we," I'm talking Negroes, refused to recognize the fact that until we got Plessy versus Ferguson overruled, declared to be unconstitutional, we wouldn't have gotten to first base with anything else. And I say in the first place, Charlie's reasoning proved correct, about not challenging segregation immediately, after all, we spent 24 years challenging, law suits, trying to educate the public and the judges, and to get the Brown case decided unconstitution -- Plessy versus Ferguson declared to be unconstitutional, then the suit on the Brown versus Board of Education, and what did we do? We ran into Massive Resistance. What was the next thing? Then the decision, the Brown decision was flawed because normally when the Supreme Court declares something unconstitutional, it sends its mandate down to the lower courts and tell them to issue proper orders to discontinue that practice, but they didn't do that in that case, all they did was declare it unconstitutional and further argument on the remedy.
They still catered to the racial attitude of the south. And the case was argued, they presented a whole lot of questions, we had a whole lot of historical questions to answer, and whether or not the fact that at the time the 14th Amendment was decided, the Congress had desegregated schools -- I mean they established segregated schools in the District of Columbia.
But my point, let me go back and make this point, as I say, until, as long as segregation was constitutional, we wouldn't have gotten to first base with the sit-ins, and the marches and all that stuff. You had to break that law and make it possible for us, at least on paper, to be first-class citizens. [tape ends.]
END.

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Oliver W. Hill, Sr. , Virginia's leading Civil Rights attorney in the 20th century, represented the students in Prince Edward County in the Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation case.

Born in Richmond in 1907, Hill earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Howard University. Hill began practicing law in 1934, focusing on litigating Civil Right cases. He received national attention in 1948 when he was the first African American since Reconstruction elected to the Richmond City Council. At the age of 91 he retired from his Richmond law firm, Hill, Tucker and Marsh, after practicing law for nearly 60 years. In 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Hill with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He began practicing law in 1934, focusing on litigating Civil Right cases. Hill received national attention in 1948 when he was elected to the Richmond City Council and became its first African American since Reconstruction. At the age 91 he retired from his Richmond law firm, Hill, Tucker and Marsh, after practicing law for nearly 60 years. In 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Hill with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Note

This interview was conducted November 13, 2002 at Mr. Hill's home in Richmond. Ronald E. Carrington, President of Media Consultants Global, Inc. of Richmond, was the director-producer of the video taping and interviewed the interviewees. Historian Dr. Betsy Brinson conducted preliminary oral interviews. The text of the oral history was transcribed by Halasz Reporting and Video, Richmond. Other editing by the staff of Special Collections and Archives, VCU Libraries.

Voices of Freedom: videotaped oral histories of leaders of the Civil Rights movement in Virginia

Transcription of interview

CARRINGTON: Okay, Mr. Hill, why don't you tell us about what you said, when you wanted to start between -- about Civil Rights between 1930 and 1960.
HILL: Whenever you are ready.
CARRINGTON: Whenever you are ready, go ahead and start.
HILL: I would like to start this program with a discussion of the significance of the movement that started in 1930. What had happened was, Negro -- I mean Dr. Mordecai Johnson, President of Howard University, had looked into the situation and found that sometimes cases went up to the Supreme Court that did not have a sufficient record for the court to act on properly, so he determined to make Howard University Law School, which from its inception in early -- in the mid 19th Century, essentially, up to that time had been an evening school, he intended to make it a first-class law school, and he engaged the services of one of the most brilliant legal scholars and fine gentleman as you could locate, Charles Hamilton Houston.
Charlie was a son of a lawyer, and he was present in Washington. He was also one of the adjunct professors. Charlie decided what ought to be done is to have a full-time day school, cut out the adjuncts. Of course, that created a quite stir around Washington because most of the adjuncts and the other teachers, too, were either lawyers or people working in -- judges and things working in the government service.
It also happened at that time a young man named -- Charles Garland's father died, left him with a large estate. He was one of these bright young men, said, oh, hell, I didn't earn it, I'm going to give it to the NAACP to fight segregation. And he turned the money over to the NAACP -- he directed that money be turned over -- that the estate be directed to -- funds of the estate be directed to the NAACP.
And the determination was made, and at Charlie's suggestion as to how the funds are to be best used, and it was determined that the best use of it would be to fight segregation. The suggestion was made that we file suits all over the south and simultaneously challenge segregation per se.
Charlie said, no, it would look like a stunt, and furthermore, we didn't have the manpower, and secondly -- I mean thirdly, we'd be banging our heads up against a stone wall in the early thirties to try to challenge segregation head-on, and the results, subsequent results proved him to be dead right.
All right. Charlie developed a very fine young faculty, including his cousin, William Hastie, who later became the first federal -- Negro federal circuit court judge, one of the first -- one of the early federal judges, district court judges. And he also had doctor -- well, at that time he wasn't a doctor -- man named Andy Ranson, he graduated Ohio State Law School. Hastie and Charlie had both finished Harvard Law School. Andy Ranson had finished as a member of the Order of Court, that's like Phi Beta Kappa. Later, he became -- got his doctorate in juris prudence at Harvard.
And I don't have anything to refresh my memory right now, and I can't [inaudible] a Jewish lawyer name Cohen. Then there was a very fine old gentlemen from out, one of them far west, like Iowa or Minnesota somewhere, they made the bulk of the -- the backbone of the new faculty. But they also had, of course -- including -- they had a man named George -- E. C. Hayes, was one of the best trial lawyers in the City of Washington, and Charlie's father was not quite the caliber of the others, but he was a fine man, constituted part of the faculty.
All right. Now, we started out, the first class had Thurgood Marshal. I went to law school to challenge segregation. I didn't know all this was happening. I mean, I had to learn that when I first became conscious of it, of course I knew it all the time, but became conscious of the fact that Congress back in the days -- Civil War days had given Negroes all the Civil Rights of any white person, and it was the United States Supreme Court in the case known as Plessy v. Ferguson that had taken all those rights away from us and put us in a class, sometimes second, third and even as low as fourth class citizens, because any white person that got off the other side and came across the street had a legal status in the United States, he didn't have to have a penny in his pocket, but he had the status superior to that than the richest Negro in town.
All right. One of the first things Charlie instructed us on was that we was going to make the law school or -- there was another young man -- he wasn't a young man, he was a little older than the rest us of named Sweat. His brother had been -- was a doctor in Detroit, and he had moved into what was known as a changing neighborhood, and white folks gave him seven days to get out, or else they were going to put him out, and so it was on the Friday that they said they were going to put him out the mob appeared, but he had gotten some of his friends to stay in the house with him, so somebody in the mob shot at the house, and somebody in the house shot back at the mob, but the mob hit the house, but the bullet from inside the house hit one of the mob and killed him, and they charged Dr. Sweat with the murder.
I will give you the rest of the story later on, but I just wanted to let you know how things went in those days. Sweat was in there, too. He was wanted to break up segregation. He was there with his brother.
Charlie, one of the first things Charlie informed us about was we were going to make Howard University Law School an approved law school, and he worked us six days a week, not only getting the law, but doing extra things like going down to the F.B.I. and learning how they did things, going out to St. Elizabeth's Insane Asylum and getting -- knowing -- getting something about that. Going down to the United States District Attorney's Office and seeing how they functioned, learn how things happened, because one of the things I was -- it was easy to understand now, later, but Negroes had had no contact, no association with so much of this stuff that you needed to have, to know something besides just the plane law.
All right. In the first case -- I mean, we worked -- school started at 8:00 o'clock in the morning, we usually get out at 11:30. Thurgood and I would go down to [inaudible]. They had all kinds of profits in those days. We bought half a dozen of the -- Daddy Graves [inaudible] and profit this and profit that. We'd go down to [inaudible] and Vine. They had a restaurant downtown there, and you go in and say "Peace, 'tis truly wonderful" and you get a big meal for a quarter, and extra big meal for 35 cents. And Thurgood had a big appetite. He got the 35 cent one most of the time. I was content with the 25.
But anyway, we would have our lunch, and then we would go back to school and we would study until around 5:00 o'clock. At that time, Thurgood would go to catch the train to go up to Baltimore. He was commuting from Baltimore. I would go leave to go to the job -- my job I had. I was waiting tables in the evening at one of the big apartment houses downtown.
All right, as a consequence, we worked steadily like that, and too, of course, Charlie seeing us there every day, we became his proteges. And at the first break -- attempted break through was during my -- our second year, a young man in Durham, North Carolina wanted to go to the School of Pharmacy, and Dr. Shepherd was President of the North Carolina Central School down there in Durham, North Carolina. And he wouldn't give -- he wouldn't give us the man's transcript, and by the time it went through court and got it, all of them -- made somebody persuade the man to change his mind, so nothing resulted from that effort to challenge School of Pharmacy in North Carolina.
But in the mean time, we studied and graduated in 1933. And Thurgood and some of the other students -- Thurgood took the Maryland Bar, and some of the other students took the District of Columbia Bar. I was planning the whole time, that whole time to go back to Roanoke, Virginia. That's where I spent my elementary school days. And so -- I hadn't applied soon enough to get the D.C. -- I mean Virginia Bar until December, so when I found out that Thurgood had passed and the boys that had taken the D.C. Bar had passed, I was under a little pressure.
But anyway, in the mean time -- I mean, let me back up a little bit. I was -- I had finished high school in mid term, and so I didn't see any need of waiting until September to go to college. I lived three or four blocks from the college. I enrolled in the spring quarter. So -- and after I learned that segregation -- I mean that Plessy had -- court taken our rights in Plessy, and at that time, you couldn't get a law through Congress to make it a crime to lynch a Negro. That was a big project of NAACP, to get up there, couldn't get a law passed to lynch a Negro, much less enhance any of his Civil Rights, so I determined the only thing we could do was somebody take another case to the Supreme Court and convince them that the 1896 decision was wrong. And being somebody, I went to the dean's office to see what I could do, had to do to become a lawyer, and I found that I could take one more case -- one more course in foreign language, and I could go to law school at the end of my senior year, and get my degree, first degree at the end of my first year in law school, that is, upon successful transmission of it.
But anyway, at that time, I decided to take a course in Latin. They said Latin might be helpful for me in law school. And in the first year -- in the Latin class, a freshman named S. W. Tucker was in the class, and I met him. So what that brings me on, when he finished college, I was finishing law school. And the next summer I was working downtown at O'Donnell's Seafood Restaurant, and I ran into him one day. I said, what are you doing? He said, studying for the bar. I said, so am I. And I had Woodbridge's notes, and I would go over to Alexandria, let him use my copy of Woodbridge's notes, and Dudley Woodbridge was a professor down at William [and] Mary that ran a bar exam course, and he was studying my notes, and I was studying -- they had a 1924 Code of Virginia, I used that, and every Thursday I would go over there, and as a consequence, in December, we both took the bar and we both passed.
There's a lot of incidents that we may or may not want to go over later, but that's -- giving the highlights as to how long I had known S. W. Tucker.
CARRINGTON: Let me ask you this. With the Plessy case --
HILL: Hmm?
CARRINGTON: With the Plessy case --
HILL: Plessy versus Ferguson.
CARRINGTON: Yes. What were some of the things you did to reverse that decision, some of the activities?
HILL: Well, I'll get to that. So I went to Roanoke in 1934, and took the bar in December, '33, and went down to Roanoke and got married -- I got married during the summer, September, and went to Roanoke and started practicing in 1934. That was in the height of the depression. More people were out on the streets than doing anything else.
In the meantime, Thurgood had taken, along with Charlie, had taken -- Charlie Houston, had taken a case in Detroit -- I mean in Baltimore, on behalf of a young man to attend the Baltimore -- I mean Maryland Law School. I had his name in mind until I got here -- until then -- we'll get it later. In the district -- united -- I mean the district court held in favor of the plaintiff, so he -- and Maryland did not appeal, so he became -- he was able to go to Maryland Law School, so we had no precedent, but we had no -- I mean, we had successful -- we had a case, but no real precedent, so --
But also, at that time there was great agitation in Virginia. We had organized -- what it was, Virginia Negroes had organized what was known as the Virginia Conference, we were the Southside Chapter, and it was a very fine operation, and very powerful in the fraternity, so we decided that -- at least it was decided, I didn't decide it, it was some of the Norfolk members that this would be an excellent thing for the NAACP to do. So we organized in Virginia in 1935 what was known as the Virginia State Conference of NAACP branches. It was the first one in the country, and we got -- to develop more strength, and wide-spread effort to deal with Negro people.
And see, what Charlie -- when he said that you better not hit your head up against a stone wall challenging the segregation per se, he decided at that time what we should do is challenge segregation at its weakest link. The doctrine was supposed to be separate but equal, but everything was separate, but nothing was equal, and everything -- so we challenged one thing after another, the failure to permit Negroes to serve on juries, petit and grand. And see, the teacher's association were up in the air because they wanted to get better salaries, and at that time in Virginia, they only gave teachers a one-year contract, and you had no tenure and, for example, I have forgotten what the one was in Norfolk, but for example, in Richmond, in 1940, the teacher -- Negro teachers went from $350.00 a year on up to $999.00, that was the highest paid, any Negro. White people started at $1,000.00 and went up to 17, $18,000, so they were here trying to do something about that, equalizing salaries. That was a big deal with them. And NAACP informed -- went through the state telling people to support us on the teachers' salary case, and then we'll tackle the school facilities themselves.
And they had -- put it this way, I started practicing in Roanoke in 1934, I practiced there until 1936. On the case -- well, I was a little dumb, instead of challenging one -- the jury I was the proponent, attorney for -- on two different cases, the judge appointed me to represent an indigent client because there was no salary attached to it, I decided I would wait to challenge the jury thing when I got a paying client. It was a little stupid. If I had gone on and challenged the jury system, I would have generated some interest and might have got me some business. I don't know.
But anyway, on one occasion, in 1934, I think, or '35, I got a call one night saying that -- the man said he called New York because he thought there was going to be a lynching in Wytheville, a Negro had shot a deputy sheriff down there. And they had told him to call me in Roanoke, so he called me about 10:00 o'clock at night and told me the story. So I told him, all right, I'd be down there the next day, because I had to borrow a car. And anyway, I got a car the next day, and drove on down to Wytheville. On my way down there, they said, now, they said what are you going to do if it looks like it is going to be a lynching in process? Well, I resolved that I wasn't going to be no fool, I was going to keep on going until I got down to Bristol and try to get some help.
But anyway, when I got to Wytheville things seemed calm enough, and I went on into town, and found the man that had called me, and went to see the defendant. They had already had a preliminary hearing and trial date was set. And to show you how things worked in those days, on the day the trial was set for I came back to Wytheville, and I walked into the courtroom, and it was empty. I saw one man up there at the desk, so I concluded he may be the Commonwealth's Attorney, so I walked up to him and told him -- hold out my card, had it in my hand, told him I was Oliver W. Hill from Roanoke, Virginia, came down to represent the defendant in the case that day.
And he looked me straight in the eye and said, "I don't know you."
And I said, "You are just as right as you can be" and I stuck my card back in my pocket and went over and sat down.
When the court opened, I walked up to -- before the judge, said, "May it please the Court, I want to move my admission to be a member of the Bar of this Court." And in Virginia, in those days, you had to be admitted to the bar of every court you practiced in. And now they have more modern facilities, they bring them all to Richmond and swear them all in, all the successful candidates from the bar exam, swear them all in at one time, but in those days, they didn't. You had to go to -- the judge looked over, told the clerk, "Swear him in, Mr. Clerk" but that was my procedure from that point on every time I was outside of my local jurisdiction if I didn't have anybody to represent me.
All right, to make a long story short, that case -- funny part, Charlie Houston and a young man by the name of J. Byron Hopkins, cousin of Claude Hopkins, [inaudible] had a wonderful bank back in those days, came through at the end of the first day of the trial and found me in the library, and I tried to get him to stay over and help me on the second day, but he said in the first place, he had a pre-arranged scheduled and didn't do it. But anyway, I had tried to get the jury -- the judge -- I mean the Commonwealth's Attorney to let the judge hear the case rather than the jury. I didn't have any faith in the jury. But he knew what the score would be, so he refused. Anyway, the jury convicted my man, but he got either three or four years, but he hadn't killed the deputy. He had shot him.
But the funny part was that I had a good defense, and the judge said while the jury was out, he said, "Young man, I think you did a nice job and if I had heard this case without a jury, I would have acquitted your client."
Of course, I made a motion for him to set the jury verdict aside, but none of them would ever do that. They would always claim they couldn't exchange their judgment for that of a jury. I mean, it was always a matter of they were factual -- it was a factual case, and if the jury wanted to believe the Commonwealth's side, then it was up -- the judge couldn't just overrule it. It wasn't exactly no -- well, I'll tell you about a case. We had a case later, after -- well, wait a minute -- that's the trouble with my age, I have a hard time keeping things in some sort of reasonable chronological order.
But anyway, by 1936 I was wasn't doing much other than people would give me a note with three or four thousand dollars, and I would draw their salary, and keep -- what was known as a wage assignment, and I would draw the salary, and parcel the money out among the creditors, I kept people from suing and garnishing their salary. But things like -- a few things like that and odds and ends, but I wasn't making any real money. And so in the spring -- middle of 1936, I decided to go on back to Washington where I could at least find some kind of job and try to develop a little more financial stability.
Anyway, so I went back to Washington, stayed -- I got back there, and the CIO was organizing, and a friend of mine, William Whitehead, he had a little restaurant down on Georgia Avenue, and we had -- we made that a headquarters, and then down to get Negroes organized, we had Negro waiters and cooks, and we tried to get the CIO to take them in their organization, but they wanted to get -- they were negotiating with the AFL group, waiters and bartenders and -- cooks and bartenders, and weren't successful at doing that, but they did offer us positions on railroads, and we got them a good man for that. I didn't want to -- anyway, that contact -- we were attending the meetings, the organizational meetings and things, I got a lot of experience and contacts with the railway.
But anyway, in 1939 Hop and -- we called him Hop -- we called him Hop -- J. Byron Hopkins, and another lawyer, young lawyer in Richmond named Tom Ewing came up from Washington because they had a legal problem, they wanted to talk to Andy Ranson, and Andy informed me and said these people -- these lawyers were coming up from Richmond, why don't I come up and join them, so I did and we learned about their problem. Then Hop asked me what I plan to do. I said, "Well, I'm trying to get myself a little stake and then I'm going back to Roanoke."
They said, "Why don't you come back to Richmond?" We formed the firm of Hopkins, Ewing & Hill. That sounded great to me. I always wanted to be in a firm rather than a solo practice, so I came to Richmond in 1939, renewed my contacts with the teachers' association, but they had brought -- filed a suit in the state court, and they sued -- Aline Black, which was a teacher had been in the Norfolk school system for 11 years, and the state held up the hearing on the case until May of 1939, and then the judge ruled that she had waived her constitutional rights, and the school board did not renew her salary, so she was -- they said the case was moot.
We found another client for a plaintiff, and -- me, I wasn't involved in that suit, but Thurgood, Thurgood and I got a plaintiff, and we filed a suit in the district court, under what was known as Bouchard's (phonetic) Spurious Class Action Theory, and we had filed that in August. All right, they delayed holding the hearing until February, Lincoln's birthday in February. And old judge, old Judge Wade (phonetic) listened -- gave -- Thurgood had started the argument since he'd already had his case in Maryland, he started the argument, and I was supposed to finish it up. But old Judge Wade gave Thurgood such a hard time, Bill Hastie said maybe -- maybe I better let him take over. I was happy to do so. But he gave Bill as hard a time as he had Thurgood, and then as soon as he finished arguing, he pulled out -- already decided -- the decision, and he held up that the -- held the same as the court had -- state court had held, that the plaintiff had waived his right when he signed the contract. So we -- we had to appeal it.
The one thing I remember, that day we were a disgusted group, we were driving back, and over the television -- I mean over the radio in the car the verdict came -- I mean news came out in the case known as Hale versus Kentucky, the United States Supreme Court had reversed, and the name of the case, Andy Ranson -- the team of lawyers was Thurgood Marshall, Bill Hastie -- Thurgood -- I mean Andy Ranson and me. Andy had tried that case, argued that case in the Supreme Court and gotten his reversal.
But anyway, now when we get back look for a case to try to determine -- file our appeal, we found out that it was the only way for us to get the record printed, briefs filed and get the case before the United States Circuit for the -- United States Fourth Circuit for its April term, and we -- we went forth and prepared our appeal, but we decided we would hold -- if somebody hadn't come up with one by the last week of the term that we'd meet at the law school and see if we could come up with a last-minute suggestion.
All right, we had a large group of lawyers there, I mean we have four of us, and plus several other members of the faculty. And we kicked everything around, and even thought of asking for an injunction, but the only trouble was we didn't believe that -- federal court would do it, enjoin the state for carrying out a state law. They would probably insist that we go before the state court, at least that was our reasoning.
But anyway, nobody could think of anything. So finally, late that evening I said, "Well, looks like the only thing we could do is for me to go back and catch the court and appear before them and ask to hold a special term, special hearing on our case in time for us to file -- court to hear it before the client's contract ran out."
And so I will never forget, Bill Hastie said, "Well, are you going to do it? Who is going to do it, you?"
I said, "yeah."
He said, "Well, that settles it."
So I call -- I was -- at that time my wife was still in Washington. I called her and told her I wouldn't be back to the apartment, I was going on to Richmond. And on my way back, I said I wonder why in the hell I didn't think to just prepare the papers right there at the law school where I had all these other members of the faculty there nearby. And actually, it was one of these situations where if you would have ranked all the lawyers there, I would have been the bottom, but I had come up with the idea.
So anyway, when I got back to the -- pretty soon I prepared the papers and put them in the mail. Back in those days, you know, we didn't have e-mails and all this sort of thing. I put, send special delivery.
And so I called the Norfolk attorney at his office and I told him I had filed these papers, and it was going to come up for a hearing on Thursday, and they were sent special delivery, and you know, they would get them later that evening or the next morning, but I told him what was the basis of my action.
Anyway, on the Thursday he was so sure I was going to get washed away, he didn't even bother to come up to the table when the case was called. But anyway, but it so happened, the funny part of what happened was just before my case a case was called involving one of the biggest lawyers in the town, a former Assistant Attorney General, and a member of the legislature, and see, in Richmond, it is still that way, although they are building a new court now, but you can look out of the window of the old post office, on the third floor is where the court held session, and look up at the legislature in the capital. And the court in those days consisted of Parker, Chief Justice Parker, Sober from Maryland, and Dobey from Virginia. I can't -- I had this man's name in my mind -- I already had his name in my mind before I got in here, but I can't pull it up right now, but anyway, as I said, it is one of the big-shot lawyers in the state. So he made -- he argued his case -- his motion. His motion was he wanted the court to restore his case that had been dismissed because he hadn't come down to the clerk's office and extended his time in time.
So Parker -- and Parker was a big man, bigger than I am, taller too, and Parker said, you are right up there in the legislature and you couldn't just come down here to the clerk's office in time to meet the rules? "Motion denied" he bellowed it out, but about that time that really made my knees quiver come to think that a big-shot lawyer could get dismissed like that.
But anyway they called my case, and I came -- went up to the thing, and I started off, "May it please the Court" and my movement is to hold a special term of court to hear this case. And Parker looked at me and said, "Wait a minute, you mean you want the court to -- the United States Government to go to the expense of bringing this court back here just for the purpose of hearing your case?"
"Yes, sir."
And he said, "What's so important about your case?"
Well, then I went on and told him what had happened in the Aline Black case, and what had happened, we filed our case in August and they -- tried to get an early hearing, they had delayed, delayed, and now, we couldn't get the record case set before the June term, a regular June court for this hearing -- I mean, for this term of court and the next term would be June term, and by that time if they failed to re-employ our client, the case would be moot, just like Aline Black case had been in the state court.
And old Soper spoke up and said, "What you want is an injunction, isn't it?"
I said, "Yes, sir."
And when he said that, the city attorney jumped up out of his seat and came running up to the thing, "Oh, we don't need no injunction. We don't need no injunction."
And then the next thing, they challenge him. "Is what this young lawyer said right?" Incidentally, this is my first time I ever appeared before an appellate court. "Is what this young lawyer said, is that correct?"
And he had to admit it was right because it was true. And anyway, it ended up, they didn't hold the special term, but they told me and they told him if anything happened to my client in the mean time, let them know, they'll find a way to do something about it, and as a consequence nobody in the Norfolk school system lost his contract until after our case had been heard in June and decided in August.
Now, I think I rambled off a little further than I had intended when I started, but anyway, you can do something about that, I guess.
CARRINGTON: Yeah. Let me ask you a question.
HILL: Go ahead, ask your question.
CARRINGTON: Let's talk a little bit about the Jim Crow laws and some of the --
HILL: Well, Jim Crow was just a -- Jim Crow was a man -- was a white man who blacked his face -- have you ever heard of black face?
CARRINGTON: Yes.
HILL: Black face, reddened his lips, enlarged his lips and all that, and had a boyful laugh. His name was actually Jim Crow. And he would put on his pantomime, pantomime of his concept of a Negro. And so -- and of course he went over big with white folks because it was a caricature of a real Negro, and so when they put the segregation laws effect -- actually, that's from everybody else, the Negro called them the Jim Crow laws. And that's all -- that's all -- I mean, nothing -- there was no special -- nothing special about Jim Crow except it was a term that Negroes used, and I guess white folks, too, but anyway, Negroes used to describe the segregation laws, that's all.
CARRINGTON: Tell me about some of the important litigation you did against Jim Crow.
HILL: Well see, our objective was to prepare a case to go to the Supreme Court and to reverse Plessy versus Ferguson, but Plessy versus Ferguson was a case that had arisen in 1895 down in New Orleans, and it was a transportation case. As a matter of fact, it was a test case. New Orleans had set up what were called the Jim Crow cars for Negroes. It was the first car behind the engine. And Negroes weren't allowed to sit in the coaches with the white folks, unless they were attending to some child of the Negro. In other words, if a maid came along looking after some white child, she could sit in the white car, in the coach with the white child because the white child had to sit in there.
But anyway, this guy Plessy was so white that when the police came into the station to serve the warrant -- I mean came into court to serve the warrant, they had to point him out to the police because he was as white as any white person. He was one of the Negroes by choice.
And they never was some certain -- it was reasonably well, but this wasn't a case that we would have -- the record wasn't built up like we would have built it up, and like we did build it up in later years, had we prepared the case. I mean, it went more on argument than it did on fact, factual information.
Anyway, but the -- let's say isolated Negroes had the gall to say that if Negroes deem it to be inferior, it was in their mind rather than anything that they had, quoted, done, recently quoted, which was a bunch of bull.
And so prior to the Plessy case, it had been a case, but it was the Civil Rights -- the radical congress -- they called them a radical congress because they had conservative Republicans and they had the so-called radical Republicans. In 1875, they had passed the Civil Rights Bill specifying Negroes to be entitled to all the accommodations, like hotels and restaurants, and that case came -- I mean, a case was developed and came up for a hearing in 18 -- about 1883 or 4, and they ruled that the Civil Rights Act didn't apply to individuals, it only applied to the state, and -- and then there was -- but that case preceded the -- and then they ignored the English common law -- see, the United States developed what is known as the common law. See they brought over the judge-made law in England in the United States courts, trial by jury and the various decisions.
And one of the regulations under English law was that a traveler was entitled to food and lodging, all he had to do was be able to pay for it. They ignored that fact altogether. And they also ignored the fact that the 14th Amendment says all persons born to naturalized United States Citizens of the United States and the state in which they reside, and they ignored the citizenship completely. So I have forgotten now where I was.
CARRINGTON: You were talking about how --
HILL: That was the situation. And so, as I say, we challenged -- everything was separated, so we had to challenge the jury system, we -- in most communities they didn't have -- they had busses to haul white children to the consolidated school, but the Negro had to walk. And for example, one of the first -- one of the early cases I had in that field was down in the Waverly -- not in Waverly -- it was down in Greensville County, the NAACP -- NAACP -- a man in Sussex County was telling me that he had to make a decision the next day, and he decided that he was going to send his girl to the school and keep the boy to work on the farm. And I said, well, hell, the boy needs an education just like the girl.
He said, I know, but I can't send both of them. And he can be a greater help to me, and she might be able to get a job teaching, doing something. And going to the school -- he lived in Sussex County about 35 miles from Waverly, and the school that they had set up for Negro training school, they didn't call them high schools, was located in Waverly, and they said -- somebody had picked up a bus and would haul the children over there for a dollar a day, but -- and he couldn't afford that, so he had two children, he hadn't decided whether he was going to let her stay -- some people boarded the whole week over in Waverly and they come back home on weekends, and so transported in this private bus.
So I told him, well, get a group of people together whose children would normally go to Waverly, and I'll come back the next Monday and we'll challenge that. And I came back and made -- I rode it out of the daggone bus driver that the only reason he wouldn't haul all of them was because they were Negroes. I had a truck -- he had brought his kids in a truck, so I carried the kids to a town about 10 miles away, down to Stony Creek where -- that was the first nearest high school, and walked in with all these bunch of kids, had a new principal, and I storm on in and enroll these students in the school. And he was all flustered, he didn't know what to do, so finally he called over to Waverly and talked to the superintendent of schools, and I could heard him holler back, "hell, no."
But anyway, I knew he wasn't going to do it. I had already prepared my papers. And I had already filed a suit in Sussex County, a teacher's county case, and they had fired the teacher. And -- but she went -- had gone to Washington and got a better job than she had down there paying her more since they weren't paying.
So anyway, went on back -- I carried the kids back, and I came on home back to Richmond and I had already -- already had the names to the case, to the suit, and I went on down and filed it that Thursday. And so when we got into court on Thursday, the bailiff met me at out there on Main Street at door, said, the judge wants to see you in chambers.
I go in, get up there, and there's the school board, and their lawyer, and judge all sitting back in his anteroom. And he said, what is this, what's all this you got here? And so I told him, well, I filed a suit for bus transportation. They won't provide no bus transportation for the students. They live about 35 miles away, most of them. Some of them even -- some of them even 42, 43 miles.
And he said, this case don't belong in my court.
And I said, yes, it does, Judge.
So he got the book -- and of course, he knew. He was trying to bluff me, I think. And anyway, Greensville County was in it, within the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court of Richmond. So he said, be sure you give them enough notice.
I said, well, listen, Judge, I haven't given them any notice at all. I just brought the case here and asked for a temporary restraining order, and he gave them notice just to accommodate them. And so he really was mad then. He looked at them and said, you all know what the law is. Go on out there and settle this thing. This was old Judge Garland, Garland Pollard.
Anyway, so we decided we'd meet -- that was Thursday -- we decided we'd meet Saturday in the lawyer's office over in Petersburg. And in the mean, time I called Martin, Martin knew -- had finished -- Martin and I had operated -- at that time on cases -- every time we had a case outside the jurisdiction out of our jurisdiction, we would go together, and so I called Martin and told him, meet me in Petersburg that Saturday.
And we got over there Saturday. I had written the school board and told them that -- one of the first things -- when they told me about it -- I mean during that week I had written -- told them I had an idea, and give me a call and we will see if we can work it out, and they didn't give me a call, and so I went on with my case. So they said, well, what is your idea?
I said, well, I don't know. I have forgotten it now. And besides, you all are so smart, you fired my teacher, you fired her in the teacher salary case. And the Chairman of the School Board jumped up and said to the school superintendent, I told you not to fire that girl. I told you all it was going to do was create some trouble. I told you not to fire her.
That made the superintendent mad, and he snapped something at me, and I snapped something back to him, and he tried like he was going to come across the table, I tried to meet him. They grabbed him on his side, and Martin grabbed me on my side. But anyway, we ended up with the meeting ending nothing.
What I was going to tell them, you see, back in those days, you couldn't just get motor vehicles, buses and things. Everything was commanded by the Army. And -- but I was going to tell them all they had to do was call Harry Byrd and tell him they needed -- to get them some buses. He just called me -- referred to me as that nigger lawyer. Said that nigger lawyer is going to have white folks and Negroes riding in the same bus.
And of course, I wasn't going to tell them that that way, but I was going to tell them that Harry Byrd could use his influence and get them some buses. But anyway, as I say, I was hot headed back in those days.
CARRINGTON: Let me ask you something about Greensville.
HILL: All right.
CARRINGTON: In Greensville back at that time they wouldn't let black people vote in a Democratic primary.
HILL: That's right. Well, now, I'll tell you about that. Then when I went to Washington -- I went back to Virginia in 1939, a Negro named West in 1929 had filed a suit. He had a Negro lawyer named Pollard and a white lawyer name Cohen. They had filed a suit challenging -- a suit known as West versus Bliley, and it was ancestors to the Bliley who up until very recently had been congressman from the 3rd District, and he even was a congressman in the 7th District until -- I think this is his first year he didn't run.
CARRINGTON: Uh-huh.
HILL: Anyway, the circuit court in 1930 ruled that Negroes were entitled to vote in the Democratic primary, and that was in 1930.
All right, Tom Ewing was one of the guys that I told you, I mentioned before, I told you before was responsible for me coming to Richmond, along with Byron Hopkins, had been down to Greensville County on that Friday evening, and they had a group down there called the Hundred Men's Club, and they had engaged him to bring a suit to make it possible for them to vote in the Democratic primary which was, in those days, was held in August. And so he came back to Richmond, and it was about -- it must have been close to midnight. Back in those days I was staying in my office. So he came in, and we talked it over and prepared the papers. And got up early the next morning, rode on down to -- Saturday morning, went on down to Emporia, that's where court held, circuit court held, county seat, Greensville County.
And the Judge was hearing a case. The Commonwealth's attorney was named Innis, and George Allen, Sr., who was the former -- or the first member of the so-called law firm Allen, Allen, Allen & Allen, plaintiff's law firm, or back in those days it was just Allen & Allen. Allen -- George Allen, Sr., and George Allen, Jr., and the other two boys, Wilbur and Ashby were in law school.
Anyway, George was -- I mean Mr. Allen had a case up there, his client had gone on (audible) gone over on the railroad track, Norfolk & Western Railroad Track and gotten killed. But anyway that case ended, the judge asked us, well, what could he do for us.
And I told him we wanted him to hear a mandamus against the electoral board. And he told me, he says -- he looked over our petition and filed it -- after it was filed, and the other lawyer said, Judge, it is two of them and the judge said Innis is here by himself, so I'm going to appoint you as lawyer to help Innis, and we will adjourn court now and come back at 2:00 o'clock and decide this thing. So in later years I used to tease Mr. Allen, I remember you were trying to keep Negroes from voting in the Democratic primary, which wasn't -- you know, really wasn't true. He was appointed.
But anyway, we came back and argued the case out. And now the court had ruled in 1930 that Negroes could vote in the Democratic primary, and could serve for it, but they still weren't never allowed, weren't permitted to vote. So the judge ruled that he wasn't going to assume that the electoral board wouldn't carry out its duty, but if they didn't then he would -- he'd be in Emporia on Thursday -- on Tuesday, and he would enter an order that day. Well, that word got around, and on Tuesday they were permitting Negroes to vote in the primary without the court order. And Calvin and I were riding around in the county to see -- varying precincts to see if anybody was having any trouble anywhere in the county. And we came around one corner, and down near the North Carolina line, and it was a very narrow, little road, and we turned the corner and it dipped down to the turn, downhill, and we look around there, and there at the bottom of the hill all are this great big crowd of white folks with ropes, sticks and things. I don't know which one of us said it, but one said, this looks like this it. And the other said, sure do.
But we couldn't -- didn't have room enough to turn around, so we kept on down through there and went on through them and went across the river -- it was one of these rivers in rural Virginia in those days they had the cover over it, and one-way traffic, and we went through, and we got about in the middle of it, I looked over -- there was a big opening, and I looked, and there was an automobile down there. I told Tom, I says, I told Tom, I says, looks like they are fishing -- trying to fish this automobile out of the river. Tom said, do you want to drive, because I'm too weak, because we really thought, like I said, we were riding into a lynching. But anyway, that's one of those things you run into, but that was the -- you asked me about the Green -- that was Greensville, that's where we got Negroes to vote in Greensville County.
But that was -- it was a great contact because around the first of the year I had a case with a young funeral director. He had joined in with an older funeral director, and he had saved up $500.00 and put -- he put it in the bank, and they served -- two or three days later, the other guy drew the money out and left town, and he was left stuck with a business that had nothing but debts. And old man Allen filed a suit for unlawful detainer to take over the building because the rent was in arrears.
And I went down to his office, told him what had happened. And he said, well, I'll tell you what I'll do, let's just have him pay the current rent and let him pay it whenever he can on arrears until he gets it paid. Well, that's as fine a thing as you could possibly want. And he told his secretary that this young man, fine young man, any time he wants to use our library or anything, anything we have got, allow him to use it, because he's a fine young man. And so we were friends from that point on. I said, things worked out beautifully having made a contact with him
And he started -- he was one of the founders of what is known as the -- now known as Trial Lawyers Association, but they started off with what was known as NAPA, National Association of Plaintiffs' Attorneys, and he -- I was too busy fighting segregation to take it up, but I had -- we had organized -- see, we couldn't join these local bar associations, they were segregated, and so we organized the Old Dominion Bar Association, and I had Mr. Allen to come in and lecture on what he was trying to do, build up his theory of trying ways -- new means of trying negligence cases, and I had him at several of our meetings
CARRINGTON: Let me ask you this --
HILL: Hmm?
CARRINGTON: During all your fights for equal rights in Virginia, they had a response call Massive Resistance.
HILL: Yes. Well now, see, the first case that was filed to challenge the unequal -- constitutionality of the segregation of schools was down in South Carolina, down in Darlington County. And Judge Brandon Weiss was the judge, and he had been an old South Carolina -- he was an old South Carolina gentleman, but he'd gotten -- he was disapproved of so far as his Carolina friends were concerned for two reasons: One, because he treated Negroes fairly; and secondly, he lost his first wife and married a girl from up north, and she -- they didn't take kindly to that at all.
I spoke in a school nearby one time, you know, Judge Weiss had invited me over to his house for dinner, and he told -- he and his wife told me all the ordeals they went through. They finally left South Carolina.
I can't recall anybody's name right now. I'm sorry I'm running blank with all these names, but he -- we had finished the first suit, [inaudible]. We were involved in it because Spots was Southeastern Counsel for NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and I was involved in the varying cases, but they were going to have the hearing in north -- in South Carolina. I had a man in Richmond.
Martin had been -- Martin was in everything up until -- he had dropped out when we started to challenge -- decided to challenge the segregation per se, but he didn't want to challenge Negro schools.
CARRINGTON: Now, with the Massive Resistance, what was the impact of that on integration?
HILL: Hmm.
CARRINGTON: Impact on --
HILL: Well, so now, the schools were -- suits were filed and tried down in North Carolina, and in the mean time -- in the mean time, we had filed several suits in the so-called separate but equal doctrine against varying school boards. One of them -- I can remember one of them was King George County, and I had the old superintendent on the stand, and I asked him a question, I said, "Why do you call secondary schools for white children high school but so-called secondary schools for Negroes you call them training schools?"
And he said, "Well, we call them training schools because we teach them things that they can get a job doing." And that was -- things like electricity, and whole lot of science and all those kind of things, and radio, that was -- it was during that -- in those days hadn't become public, but I mean, it was being studied, all those kind of things, anything that was beyond manual labor or menial job -- omitted from the training school, so-called training schools. About the only thing they did give because they had manual training, carpentry, and taught girls domestic science, but so far as real science and things of that nature were omitted.
You know, when you finished the seventh grade, you had to -- up until the time the class ahead of me [inaudible] you had to go down to Petersburg to attend Normal Industrial School, or to St. Paul's or to the Academy Union. There was no high school. They called it Harrison High in seventh and eighth grade, but about the only thing in the eighth grade that we had, there was no science at all. The only thing we had, probably algebra, and I'm trying to remember whether they had geometry or not. I can't remember right now.
But -- so what did I say -- opportunities for Negroes to become trained in anything above the level of manual labor was restricted or eliminated.
And you asked me about massive so, all right, old judge -- you know, you always have preliminary hearings before judges, what they call pretrial hearings to pick dates and discuss issues and things, raise for -- witnesses, list of witnesses. And old Justin -- and Prince Edward County had gotten the Hunton & Williams firm to represent them. Mr. Moore, T. Justin Moore, whose father was the chief lawyer, one of their principal trial lawyers, Manny Archibald Robertson, and they had been down to South Carolina and seen the trial in South Carolina, and they said -- they were telling the Judge Hudson [inaudible] see, they had the dolls, you know, and psychological tests, asked the Negro children to pick out choice between white and black dolls, and you asked them about who they prefer to be, most of them would say the white doll, or the one they thought was the better doll, most of them would say the white doll, who -- they had been subjected -- that was one of the other vicious things about segregation that it is not only isolated, but they tried to make Negroes believe that they were inferior. And so we tried the case, and we finally got a decision overruling Plessy versus Ferguson, instead of them coming in saying well, let's ban it, set up a meeting a week from the decision.
Incidentally, the week before the decision I had been down in Williamsburg as a member of a group of academic -- along with a bunch of academics and prominent citizens under the auspices of the Southern Regional Conference -- Southern Regional Council Conference, that's what it was, we had gotten a grant from the [inaudible] of the Republic, $250,000, they had about 10 or 15 of us down here working on projects to ease into desegregation. And I came back -- that's the only reason I was up -- that's one of the reasons I wasn't up in Washington next -- on Monday when the decision came out.
But anyway -- oh, so he was standing there, he prearranged for a meeting. Now, in Boston that day, the national convention of the NAACP, everybody knew this decision was going to come as soon as they had decided and whenever we got a favorable decision at that Saturday we would hold a conference in Atlanta to make a statement, the NAACP's reaction to it.
So Dr. Tinsley, Jesse Tinsley and the Executive Secretary for the state conference, the NAACP, and I were delegates assigned down there. I can't think of that boy's name either at this moment but I'll get it out somewhere before we get too far. And we went down to Atlanta. On Sunday we held a conference, and we decided -- worked on our statement, and back in those days you had to confirm 24 hours or you might not have a seat on a return trip, on a round-trip ticket on any reservation that you had, so we had confirmed, but we were able to get out -- finished the conference about 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon, we [inaudible] there was a plane going to Richmond at 4:00. We rushed out to the airport to try to see if we could get an earlier flight out. And as I say -- standing there, also, issued a call to [inaudible] a group of people, I was one, Tinsley was one, president, and so was the chief -- the Executive Secretary of the NAACP, and the President of the Virginia Teachers' Association, the Negro Section of Parent Teachers Association and I think -- well, I know the President Norfolk State College, and I think Tom Newton -- I mean Tom Henderson who at that time had been one of our expert witnesses, was the Dean of the college at Virginia Union.
But anyway, we got down and they gave us standby things. Well, we went, stood by for the 4:00 o'clock flight and we couldn't get on. But we knew out flight was supposed to leave at -- between 6:00 and 7:00 o'clock, but thinking we were at 6:00 o'clock or 7:00 o'clock, whatever it was, we were the first ones in line, but we still had these daggone standby tickets, they told us -- we were standing there, we had to stand back.
So we told them, oh, no, this was for the 4:00 o'clock plane. We confirmed reservations on this flight. The guy at the gate wouldn't take our word for it. And the Executive Secretary of the NAACP rushed back into the -- into the waiting room, got the manager, came out. Well, by the time he came out, they had let enough people on the plane so they only had two seats. So we told them there were three of us, and we had an appointment with our governor for the next day in the morning.
They offered us to wait over until the next day, put us up in a hotel and we go out the next morning. That won't do. Well, two of you can go and one stay. We said, no, there are three of us, we were here, and we want -- all three or us were entitled to go. So in the mean time, while they were arguing with us, they cut the motor off in the airplane trying to -- whoever was on there who was not confirmed wouldn't admit it, so we held that plane up for an hour and a half, and finally, the guy confessed that he had -- he was from [inaudible], South Carolina, and he hadn't confirmed, so when we got on there, it was a hot night, and people was sweltering, and when they cut the -- when they cut the motor off, that cut the air conditioning off, that was the reason they cut the motor off. And so when we got to Richmond, the weather was so bad in Richmond we couldn't land, we had to go up to Washington, take a -- they put us on a bus and brought us back to Richmond, so we didn't get home until early the next morning.
But anyway, we were back in Richmond in plenty of time to go down to the capitol to meet with Stanley. And Stanley's idea was, now that you have gotten the decision -- in the mean time -- when the decision first came out, he made a sensible statement, he said, well, the sky is not going to fall, we'll work this thing out. But Harry Byrd was out of town -- out of the country at that time. So anyway, he said at the meeting, his idea was that you all have got your decision, and we'll just let things ride for a while, and you don't do anything, and then we'll scout how we can work it out.
So I spoke up, I said, no, if you do that, you been saying all the time, the people don't want to do it, it's the lawyers doing this thing, and that's all they ever want to do. And nobody in the group agreed with him, even -- we had the publisher of the -- one of the people there, the publisher of the Journal Guide, Norfolk Journal Guide was there, he was a very conservative man, but he said, oh, no, they can't do that.
An then they had a newspaper over in Roanoke called the Tribune, which was run by a Republican, he was ultraconservative, and he said, no, they can't do that.
So anyway, we wouldn't agree we weren't going to do anything. We were going to take some action. We wanted some movement in September, and he wanted us to pass over it for a year.
So anyway, what happened is when Byrd got back, even they -- even that kind of conservative action, they came up with what they call Massive Resistance, and the first thing they attempted to do was to get -- they filed a suit to allow the state -- it was somebody against Dade, Dade was the controller, allowed the state to use state funds to pay tuition grants to white children, and they set up a commission known as the Garland Commission -- yeah, Garland -- and Garland was a state Senator from down --
CARRINGTON: Garland Gray?
HILL: Garland Gray, yeah, I think he was state senator from down Sussex County. And so we argued with them about that. And Henry was so upset he shook his fist at them one time when they had a public hearing. I told them -- I did tell them, all they were going to do was pass daggone, crazy laws that we're going to have declared unconstitutional. Only thing they were going to do is waste time, but in the mean time they came up with what is known as Massive Resistance.
And they had invited all the southern states to a big hearing here in Richmond where they put forth this thing, idea, and they started passing -- at that time -- oh, shucks -- let's see, the attorney general had been -- he came in when I started practicing over in Roanoke in '34, he appeared in Hustings Court, and we got along fine. He was a semi -- he was a semi-liberal guy. He was very fair, and he appointed me on two or three occasions pro bono. To show you how bad things were, you didn't get any fee for representing an indigent client unless he was subject to penalty of more than ten years in the penitentiary, and then you got either $10.00 or 15, I forgot, or something like that.
And one time he appointed another Negro lawyer in Roanoke named Jacobs Reed and I to represent a man who was a hobo, had come to town and gotten involved in a gambling game and now [inaudible] he shot another Negro and killed him. And I won't get into that. That's not a --
CARRINGTON: What were some of the legal --
HILL: Hmm?
CARRINGTON: What were some of the litigation you did against the Massive Resistance?
HILL: I can't hear you.
CARRINGTON: What were some of the legal -- some of the litigation -- what was some of the litigation you did against Massive Resistance?
HILL: Well, Massive Resistance, they passed a whole lot of crazy laws, one was [inaudible] and they started holding -- appointed two committees, state legislative committees. Thompson Committee in the Senate and the Boatwright Committee in the House of Representatives. They would hold hearings, and they were trying their best -- biggest thing they tried to do was find -- get a list of the names of the NAACP members so they could harass them. And Henry -- I mean not Henry -- Tucker and I successfully warded off all of those. We carried them to court.
And they also passed a law called Pupil Placement Law. They set up a three-man commission in Richmond to make the appointment of what school all the children in Virginia would go to in their respective vicinities. And then there was another crazy law they passed, they charged -- set up a law saying -- charged us with running and capping. See, back in those days you couldn't -- things weren't as nice as they are now so far as lawyers is concerned. You couldn't advertise. And you couldn't solicit a client like they do now. All that was called running and capping, so they charge us with running and capping and brought a suit against -- finally brought a suit against S. W. [inaudible].
And -- trying to make -- they had half a dozen or more statutes that they passed trying to avoid desegregating the schools, and we went down there, sat in, they would hold hearings all around the state, the Boatwright Committee and the Thompson Committee. And we refused to -- recommend to my clients to refuse to answer questions that would expose the names of members of the NAACP. That was one of the big things that was happening.
CARRINGTON: Well, with that in mind tell me about the Prince Edward County School Case.
HILL: All right, well, the Prince Edward County School case in 1939, schools opened down -- school, brand new school was opened down in Prince Edward, it was over crowded the day it opened, to show you how much planning they did, an inter-racial school, and starting in early 40s I went down there several times, before I went in the Army, trying to get the school board to do something about the situation.
Their remedy was to put up cardboard shacks and run stove pipes from one to another, and then down into big oil bed -- drums to heat the schools, so that meant those kids would have to leave the main building in bad and inclement weather, and go from one school to the other building to another, or in -- if the weather was real bad, slick out, or snow, or mud, and they kept promising to do something about it.
They always got rid of me. Of course, I used to appear before a lot of boards of supervisors for Negroes because when Negroes appeared, they asked them, what you want, what do you want, John, or Jim? And they would try to tell them, and they would cut them off, tell them they was going into executive session.
Well, at least when I appeared, they at least sat and listened to me, and then do -- whenever they want to do, any time we talk, finish talking, then they always go into executive session so we couldn't hear the discussion.
But anyway, that was -- that situation continued. I went into the Army, and came out. Well, in the mean time, we filed suits in several places. And one of the suits we filed was against a group in Pulaski County, [inaudible] a dentist. We filed -- because he was about 60 or 70 miles from the school over in Christiansburg. It was a consolidated school. They took care of kids in the City of Radford, Pulaski and Montgomery County and somewhere else and all. I have forgotten now. And they hadn't done anything about it. So we were planning a motion for further relief, and one Monday afternoon, the telephone rang and a young lady name Barbara Johns, her uncle was one of -- the famous fiery Baptist preacher named Vernon Johns. Vernon Johns was a firebrand, and he was the one who had been down in Montgomery County for the previous five years before Martin Luther King came there. He was all fired up. He was a firebrand if there ever was one, but he was very eccentric.
But anyway, Barbara Johns called, and I answered the phone and asked if we would finish up -- in my book there's a picture of us sitting at a table -- and asked what we were doing on the afternoon. They called Martin, Spot and I. But I happened to be nearest to the telephone, so I picked up -- answered the telephone, she was telling me, she told me how they had gone out on strike, and the reason and everything that was going on, very orderly, and she wanted us to represent her, Pulaski way. [inaudible] at me.
I said, you don't need no representation. I said, we have already filed suit in Prince Edward -- I mean in Darlington County, South Carolina, challenging segregated schools, and we don't need but one suit to prove a point, so what you ought to do, you all are seniors, you go on back to class, you made your point and go on back to school the next day.
Well, she pleaded so hard that I asked her, well, I'll tell you what, we'll be going up to Christiansburg on Wednesday morning, this is Monday evening, on Wednesday morning, and we'll leave earlier and stop by Reverend [inaudible] church. You'll be there in the Sunday school room, and we'll talk with you, talk it over there.
And that's what we did. On our way up there, we still intended to tell the kids to go on back to school, but we got there, they had such high morale, and so well organized, and could state their case so nicely, we didn't have the heart to turn them down. So we told them if they were no longer filing suit on the theory of separate but equal, but if their parents would back them in a suit challenging constitutionality of the segregation laws per se, we'll take the case. And that we would be going up to Christiansburg and we'd be coming back through there Thursday night. This was early Wednesday morning, and we would be coming back through there Thursday night, and have the parents there and we will go over it there.
We came back Thursday night, the parents was there with the kids, and the parents -- a hundred to one -- 100 percent agreed to back the children. Somebody though raised the question, said, well, this is a county affair, maybe we ought to bring it before the whole county. That's what we wanted to do, so we agreed. And this was Thursday, so we agreed to hold a meeting the following -- not the next day, Friday, but a week from the following day, Friday, and we got there that Friday evening Spot and I, they had the meeting -- of course they had it in the church, in the sanctuary, you know, and the place was full, standing room only. And the News Leader had a reporter down there.
And they argued about it, and it was 90 to one -- I mean 90 percent of the people wanted to pursue the case, so we agreed to it. But one of the principal employer was -- a man was principal of the school over in Cumberland County, but he lived in Greensville County, and -- I mean lived -- not Greens -- in Prince Edward County. And we could understand his problem. He was trying to protect his job. So that was it.
Now, as a consequence of the strike by the pupils -- as a consequence, they fired the principal of the high school, [inaudible] and they fired the county -- what was known as the county agent, agricultural agent, man named -- I think his name was Lancaster, because they figured they were active NAACP people. They figured -- they really had put the kids up to it, but the main proponent of the strike and carrying out and getting the principal out of the school on the date was Barbara Johns. That one mistake we made in filing the suit, we named the plaintiffs alphabetically, but we should have -- it should have been Barbara Johns versus Prince Edward County instead of Davis versus Prince Edward County.
CARRINGTON: You were talking a little while ago about Dr. Sweat and the story about a mop at his house. Can you tell us about that?
HILL: Oh, yeah. That was one -- one of outstanding criminal lawyer in those days was a lawyer named Clarence Darrow. That's one thing about Charlie Houston, he was not only a great lawyer himself and a real gentleman, but he was highly respected throughout the bar. He wasn't a member of the bar association because they were excluding him from that, too, but he was highly respected, and people like Clarence Darrow lectured to my class. He was the lawyer that raised the Scottsboro case, Scottsboro boys had been charged with rape down in Alabama, and the lawyer who handled that later became a judge up in New York, raised the jury question -- lectured to us -- Ball, the founder of the American Bar -- I mean the ACLU lectured at Howard, first Negro to hold a cabinet position in the United States Government from Boston, Taft appointed him Assistant United States Attorney -- I mean Assistant Attorney General; Morris, big lawyer in Chicago who handled -- represented a rail company out there back in those days; and Raymond Pace Alexander who later became a judge and was a big-time lawyer in Philadelphia; and Cummings, the United States Attorney for -- in the District of Columbia.
And as a consequence of all that extra work we did, now -- we made -- visited all these different places, and as a consequence of our work six days a week Howard Law School was approved by the American Association of Better Law Schools and by the American Bar Association before the end of our second year. Students --
CARRINGTON: Would you like some water?
HILL: Hmm?
CARRINGTON: Would you like to stop and get some water?
HILL: That might not be a bad idea.
CARRINGTON: Let's stop the tape for a minute. (Recess)
HILL: Bam, and he was sweating.
CARRINGTON: Okay, let me ask you this, the camera is back on, why don't you name the people who were in your law firm, because you talked about Spotswood Robinson, name the people that you had in your law firm.
HILL: Well, our first firm it was organized -- well, see the Army started pressing me -- what got me in trouble, I applied for a commission in the Navy. See, back in those days, the Navy weren't accepting anybody except people in -- the mess men, waiters, and cooks but they were giving commissions to young white boys who had a whole lot less trial experience than I had, so applied for a commission.
Now, I am 35 years old, and -- but anyway, the only thing it did was stir them up, and they said -- they started talking about drafting me. And let me -- I did that, then in the mean time, at that time, William Hastie was the deputy -- associate -- assistant to the secretary of -- what they call -- wasn't Secretary of Defense but what they call the Secretary of Defense now over at the Pentagon, and we were discussing the thing, and he said, well, Oliver, I'll tell you what to do, they are going to organize a group of airmen down in Tuskegee, and they have a position -- you are too old for flight, but they can make you a Master Sergeant, which is a permanent recruit down there, head of training.
So I said, no, I'm not trying to get out of military service. I'm just trying to break some ice. And so we had -- I had a contact in the Department of State, and to make sure they couldn't do it and bounce me out by saying I'm physically unfit, anyway, they arranged for me to take the examination. Even Air Force recruits, here in Richmond, down -- at the old 6th Street Market, on the second floor.
And of course they passed me because I was in hell of good physical condition, and the guy gave me good marks all the way down until he got to my feet, and he said that I had racially flat feet, and that was a bunch of baloney because I had a high arch, I still got a little arch now as old as I am, but I had a very high arch at that time. But anyway, my number came up, and they put me on alert.
So in December 1942, I told them I couldn't go from day to day not knowing when I would be called. I just agreed that I would come in in June. And the reason for doing that was, I had in mind -- see, Spotswood Robinson, William S. Robinson, William S. Robinson is his full name, finished Howard with the highest marks of any student up to that time, and is still the highest marks of any student at Howard, and he was serving as instructor over at Howard.
And what had happened was, his time came to take the examination, he had planned to take the examination, he actually got -- had became actually ill, and he couldn't take the exam, and then every year after that, this was 1938, now, so then that year, every time after that, he -- what do you call the things -- what do you call it -- systematic -- not systematic, he became ill --
CARRINGTON: At the same time?
HILL: Yeah. So he never did take the bar. So all right, so his father and I had talked about -- his father was an attorney, his father was a real estate lawyer, we had talked about it, and there was some quarters in the old Consolidated Bank Building, which is across the street on the south -- on the east, southeast corner of 1st and Marshall, 1st and Marshall, and back behind the Standard Oil -- Standard Grocery Store -- not -- Standard Drug Store, and where the parking lot is now. Anyway, that's -- I'm going to suggest to Spot that we form a firm, and we'll take that space upstairs which was sitting vacant.
So I talked to Spot about it, and he agreed, and now he got -- he got to take the bar exam, so he signed up for the bar, and in the mean time we agreed that Spot's father would hold everything I had pending, get it postponed, postponed or delayed until Spot had finished -- passed the bar, never any question in anybody's mind he couldn't pass the bar, and that's what we did.
All right, then I went into the Army, Martin had -- see, Martin and I had worked together. He had gotten an appointment as assistant lawyer in the Department of Justice, and they had him out in California prosecuting Germans. And he got disgusted with what was happening, and he resigned, because even before, he had called me and said -- had written me and said if you don't -- you better come on get in the Department of Justice because otherwise they are going to draft you, send you to Camp Claiborne -- send you down to Louisiana -- he didn't say Claiborne, send you down Louisiana and put you in an infantry unit, and that's what happened to him.
But anyway, that summer Martin resigned and came up -- I got a letter. The firm had been from Hill -- still Hill and Robinson, became Hill, Martin and Robinson. And Martin named Martin, lawyer from Danville, his brother was cashier of the bank over there, and William S. Robinson, III, was the son of William Robinson, Jr., who was a lawyer in Richmond. And from a firm at that time was Hill, Martin and Robinson. That's the way it was up until middle of the fifties, after the Brown decision when we dissolved it.
Anyway -- oh, what was I --
CARRINGTON: I think the second firm, Hill, Tucker --
HILL: Hill, Tucker, that came on later, after we dissolved the firm. It became Hill, Buckman -- became Dean of the Howard Law School. We had a little misunderstanding, anyway, but Martin left the office there on 3rd Street, we had to move out of the bank building, over on 3rd Street, 600 Block of 3rd Street, and we moved across the street from the church, Methodist Church there, and we formed a loose arrangement, Martin and I was partners, but a young lady name Rolfin, we were practicing under the firm name of Hill, Martin and Rolfin. And then I left them, and Tucker and I started working together, and we attempted to -- well, we did form -- we formed a firm, but in the mean time, we sure were fighting this Bob Carter who was at that time the chief counsel for the NAACP, and Thurgood and -- Thurgood was chief counsel and Director of the Legal Defense Fund, and of course Spotswood was still the Southeastern Regional representative.
We filed two suits. They filed on behalf of the Legal Defense Fund, and we filed on behalf of the NAACP. We filed the suits simultaneously. And when it came up for trial the court pulled what we called -- what was known as the Pullman Doctrine. They said we had to go over and exhaust our remedies in state court, and hell, I mean, they'd been segregating Negroes all this time, all kinds of decisions, but we still had to go over there first, they made us go over to the state court, get a decision from the state supreme court.
And while that was happening, I got a call asking me to do the party a favor, accept the position in the FHA as Chief of the [inaudible] Relations Commission, and it was what you call a Grade 15 appointment, and that was -- you didn't have to get senate confirmation, and they didn't want the person who -- if I hadn't taken it, the person that they were afraid they would have to hire was appointed -- a man in the classified section that they didn't want. So I agreed to come up there.
By doing that I had to give up -- I didn't know it -- I didn't check it out too carefully, and when I went up to be sworn in, they pulled it on me that I would have to resign from my law firm. At that time, S. W. Tucker and Hill, Hill next to Tucker, but we also -- then I got in touch with Henry, and Henry came down, because I had promised during the fifties at one of the hearings he had made a good presentation before the Gregg Commission, and I had asked him, what was we planning to do.
He said he was planning to go to law school.
I said, well, that was fine. He was chairman of the student body. I told him that's fine. If you decide to come back to Richmond, I'd give him a job. And so he -- at the time, early in the sixties, he was in the Labor Department. So I called on him to come down, join a (inaudible.) Because we had too much work for one man. So that's when Henry Marsh went into it. The firm name became Hill, Tucker and Marsh. That's the [inaudible]. Of course, that was the last firm.
Later we had -- we had other parties but we never changed the name. Of course, the first person we added was Henry's brother, but that didn't change the name. And supposed to be a lot of additions, but part -- but what we did do was, maybe somewhere in talking about this, I'll tell you about the number of judges that came through our office.
But the point I wanted to make is I think -- I don't think I made it up to this time, although I've done a lot of talking, is that we refused -- when I say "we" I'm talking Negroes, refused to recognize the fact that until we got Plessy versus Ferguson overruled, declared to be unconstitutional, we wouldn't have gotten to first base with anything else. And I say in the first place, Charlie's reasoning proved correct, about not challenging segregation immediately, after all, we spent 24 years challenging, law suits, trying to educate the public and the judges, and to get the Brown case decided unconstitution -- Plessy versus Ferguson declared to be unconstitutional, then the suit on the Brown versus Board of Education, and what did we do? We ran into Massive Resistance. What was the next thing? Then the decision, the Brown decision was flawed because normally when the Supreme Court declares something unconstitutional, it sends its mandate down to the lower courts and tell them to issue proper orders to discontinue that practice, but they didn't do that in that case, all they did was declare it unconstitutional and further argument on the remedy.
They still catered to the racial attitude of the south. And the case was argued, they presented a whole lot of questions, we had a whole lot of historical questions to answer, and whether or not the fact that at the time the 14th Amendment was decided, the Congress had desegregated schools -- I mean they established segregated schools in the District of Columbia.
But my point, let me go back and make this point, as I say, until, as long as segregation was constitutional, we wouldn't have gotten to first base with the sit-ins, and the marches and all that stuff. You had to break that law and make it possible for us, at least on paper, to be first-class citizens. [tape ends.]
END.